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The Edge of Things 


By 

Elia W. Peattie 

Author of “The Beleaguered Forest,” “A Mountain Woman,” 
and “ The Shape of Fear ” 



Chicago New York Toronto 

Fleming H. Revell Company 

London and Edinburgh 

MCMIII 





COPYRIGHT, I903, 
BY FLEMING H. 
REVELL COMPANY 
June 


THE LIBRARY OF ! 
CONGRESS. 

Two Copie* Feceivoc f 

AUe 21 1803 I 

Cop>ngM fenny 

F- /Ff Ob 

CLASS CC XXc. N® 

L <0 0 / C 

COPY 9. 



* * « « « 

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CHICAGO: 63 WASHINGTON STREET 
NEW YORK: 158 FIFTH AVENUE 

TORONTO: 27 RICHMOND STREET, W. 
LONDON: 21 TATERNOSTER SQUARE 
EDINBURGH: 30 ST. MARY STREET 


TO 

MADELINE YALE WYNNE 


WHO HAS PASSED NO ART WITHOUT A SALUTATION 
AND NO FRIEND WITHOUT A WORD 
OF CHEER 

























Contents 


PAGE 

The Man at the Edge of Things - - n 

A Touch of the Real Thing - 27 

Dilling Brown Hangs Up His Hat - - 47 

Brown Has an Obsession - 61 

In Pursuit of the Chimera - - - 79 

The Home-Madness 97 

Wan Tsze-King ------ 121 

Time’s Fool 145 

The Descent of Westover - - 155 

A Woman Intervenes - 171 

What Papin Had to Tell - - - - 181 

Westover Crosses the Divide - - 201 

Papin Tells Something More - - - 211 

The Lady of the Northern Lights - 223 

In Taku Harbor 231 

Katherine Gets Her Thimble - - 247 



Illustrations 

PAGE 

"By Jove! That’s Fine!” .... 31 

"By All that’s Mysterious, if here isn’t 

His Dog Now” 81 

"He Put His Hand to His Hip and Sprang 

before His Young Guest” . . .136 

'"'There are Better Things to Think of,’ 

She Said” 197 





The Man at the Edge of Things 




0 





The Man at the Edge of Things 


The Commencement exercises were over. 
Nothing remained — except everything. In 
that bewildered frame of mind which accom- 
panies the passing away of college days, and 
the beginning of a new heaven and a new 
earth, Dilling Brown had shown his aunt, Miss 
Elizabeth Brown — his aunt who was also his 
guardian — over the historic halls and around 
the campus, had introduced her to professors, 
and told her yarns till she protested. 

“You’re just like one of those tiresome 
books of short stories, Dilling,” she said. 
“Can’t you be a little more consecutive? 
You chop up my emotions so!” 

Dilling shook back his too abundant hair — 
it was a perfect hay color — and laughed with 
huge appreciation. Then he took his aunt 
over to drink tea with some friends while he 
went to look up a man. 

The man, known to his associates as 
Tommy Letlow, was up in his room packing 
his best silk hat. 


The Edge of Things 


“You darned dude!” cried Brown. 

“La la la la la la,” was Letlow’s lyric 
greeting. He spun round on one nimble heel 
and sparred at Brown. 

“Shut up!” said Brown, reaching under 
his guard. “Where are you going, you 
sweep, when you leave these hacademic 
’alls?” 

Letlow looked glum. “I don’t know,” 
he admitted. “At least my ticket reads to 
New York. Any one can go to New York. ” 

Brown forced his little companion back 
into a chair. 

‘ ( But I want to rest easy nights. ’ ’ 

“Rest in peace, son.” 

“I can’t, unless you tell me more. How 
are you going to stay in New York after you 
get there? Who’ve you got to look to — or 
after?” 

“Just my bloomin’ self.” 

“And you haven’t a million left out of 
your patrimony, eh?” 

“Patrimony! What a pretty word, Dil! 
Mighty pretty word, that. Begins with a p 
and sounds so pleasant. No, there aren’t 
millions. But there is enough to buy a ticket 
to New York.” 


12 


The Man at the Edge of Things 


“ Going to try a newspaper?’ * 

“All fools walk the same road.” Letlow 
got at his packing and his singing again. 

“But my aunt says,” broke in Brown, 
“that she wants you to come up home with us 
for a time. She wants you to help eat the 
fatted capon. We go up to New York, too, 
and take a two-hour run down Long Island, 
you know. Aunt lives in a rotten little town 
there, and raises boxwood. At least that is 
the impression to be gathered from a casual 
glance at her front yard. Her object in life 
is to keep Nettie from breaking the china 
which my grandfather brought from Canton 
fifty years ago, when he was in the trade. 
Nettie is a careless young thing who has been 
in the family forty-three years. Come along 
and see Nettie and the china and the cat and 
the boxwood; it would give me more pleasure 
than anything I could think of. Aunt Betty’s 
a brick — you won’t find many like her. She 
has only one weakness — and that’s me. But 
we’re the last of our kind, and very rare and 
precious, so we attach a good deal of impor- 
tance to each other. Come on, Tommy. Do 
it, eh?” 

“Of course I will, you beggar! Going 


t 


13 


The Edge of Things 


to-night? Five sharp? I’ll be there. 
Ladies’ waiting-room! All right, Dil, my 
duck. And please , Dil, give my compliments 
to your aunt. ’ ’ 

So the three settled down in the old house 
beyond the boxwood, and the young men put 
in a good deal of time laughing about nothing 
in particular, and got themselves up in white 
flannel and played tennis afternoons with 
Anice Comstock and Dorcas Pilsbury, nice 
girls, whom Dilling had known since he knew 
anything. Aunt Betty sat in the shade of the 
elms with Mrs. Pilsbury, and there were 
lemonade and seed-cakes served — and noth- 
ing else happened. No one made love to any 
one else. No one did anything remarkable. 
The girls were quiet girls, who did not play 
tennis any too well, and who made their own 
frocks. They both thought the young men 
laughed too much, and wondered what they 
meant by their frivolous view of things. Miss 
Dorcas asked Tommy Letlow one evening 
if he had any religious convictions. Poor 
Tommy, who was very fair, with soft, black 
curls on the top of his head, and innocent, deep, 
blue eyes, looked like a little boy who has 
been scolded and is going to cry. But Miss 


The Man at the Edge of Things 


Dorcas kept her eyes fixed on him, and he 
had to answer. 

“Upon my soul, Miss Dorcas, I — really, 
Miss Dorcas, I can’t say. I’d stick out the 
day’s work, whatever it was, and keep along- 
side anybody who expected me to, you know, 
and I wouldn’t be surprised at anything that 
might happen on — on either side of the grave, 
you know, Miss Dorcas. What I have seen 
of the world already has been so surprising and 
so — so incomprehensible, that there are no — 
no miracles, you understand, Miss Dorcas, in 
my estimation. Everything is a miracle, you 
see. Only it was some one else who said 
that, wasn’t it?” 

“It was Walt Whitman,” said Miss Dor- 
cas, quite severely. 

“Was it, Miss Dorcas? I’m glad to have 
quoted him, even if I didn’t know I was 
doing it. It isn’t my fault, you know, that I 
haven’t been better taught than I have about 
— what you were speaking of, you know, a 
minute ago. If my mother had lived, I sup- 
pose I should have been different. But every- 
body is dead who took any interest in me, 
except Dil over there. ’ ’ 

He looked quite wistful, and the girl 

15 


The Edge of Things 


rubbed the toe of her tennis shoe back and 
forth in the dust, with an air of wishing to say 
something comforting, but she only remarked: 
4 ‘Mr. Brown is a very pleasant young man,” 
looking over to where Dilling and Miss Anice 
were tossing balls languidly about the tennis- 
court, “but he seems to lack earnestness.” 

Tommy went for lemonade just then — the 
maid was bringing it out to the table under 
the elms — and so he attempted no answer. 
He wondered so much over the meaning of 
Miss Dorcas’s complaint about the lack of 
earnestness in Dil and himself that he spilled 
half a dozen drops of the lemonade on that 
young lady’s lilac-sprigged gown, with instant 
obliteration of the lilac sprigs. That evening 
he had a temporary hope that Dil, at least, 
had some latent earnestness in him, by which 
he might be justified to his gentle critics, for 
he heard him saying: 

“Well, Aunt Betty, dear, I must get out 
of this. Tommy and I are going to seek our 
fortunes. We are going to walk down the 
road till we meet a man, and we are going to 
say, ‘Please, good man, give us some straw, 
that we may build us a house. ’ And the 
good man — ” 

16 


The Man at the Edge of Things 


“Dil, what nonsense! Sit up, sir.” Dil 
got off the sofa and placed himself with undue 
solemnity in one of his aunt’s gothic-backed 
chairs. Tommy had fears that this earnest- 
ness was not yet of the quality to recommend 
itself to the young lady with the sprigged 
lawn. Miss Elizabeth Brown continued to 
address her nephew: “I want to say to you, 
Dilling, what I have not said before — that I 
was mightily pleased with you Commence- 
ment Day. I was pleased with what you 
said, and with the way you bore yourself, and 
with the reports I got of you. ’ ’ 

“Oh come, Aunt Betty, dear, this is too 
bad! What have I done to deserve this at 
your hands?” 

“Don’t laugh, Dil. If your father could 
have lived to hear and see you, my satisfac- 
tion would have been complete. Of course I 
am not going around crowing over you. This 
is all between ourselves and Mr. Letlow. 
Didn’t you notice how offhand and deprecating 
I was the other day? But in fact, Dil, and 
quite seriously, I was and am so pleased that 
it gives me grace to make a great sacrifice. ’ ’ 

“You have never done anything else but 
make sacrifices.” 


17 


The Edge of Things 


“Many of the things you may have called 
by that name were refined forms of self-in- 
dulgence, my dear.” 

‘ ‘ Oh, ho ! ” he laughed, with flattering irony. 

“But now I am going to make a sacrifice. 
I’m going to give you what’s coming to you 
out of the property, Dilling, and let you 
choose for yourself what you will do with it. 
I’ve got a little annuity fixed up for myself, 
and with the old home and the garden and 
all, I shall live like a queen — a queen with 
economical tendencies. The over and above 
goes to you, and I have decided that it would 
better be yours now instead of several years 
from now. It’s all arranged for, and Mr. 
Effingwell — our solicitor, Mr. Letlow — is 
coming in the morning. Mr. Letlow’ s pres- 
ence in the library at ten o’clock would be a 
favor. There’s the house and the plate and 
the mahogany and my laces to settle about. 
They may not mean much to you, Dilling, 
but some day you may have a wife who will 
appreciate them. Now, the worst of it is' 
that the sum I can offer you is not sufficient 
to permit you to settle down among old 
friends in this part of the country and make any 
showing, but it is enough to take you away to 

18 


The Man at the Edge of Things 


some new — and probably disagreeable — part 
of the world, to accumulate experience and, 
I hope, property.” 

The young man murmured something inar- 
ticulate. His bold eyes were a trifle moist, 
and his lips looked unnatural, as though he 
were trying to be superior to human emotion 
with very poor success. He was a strapping 
fellow, with shoulders a degree too high, a 
large head, a thick neck, and an obstinate 
chin; but his brow showed ideality and imagi- 
nation, and his smile would have won a hang- 
man to friendliness. His aunt went on: 

“I’m gratified, too, to see that you do not 
become sentimental over every girl you meet. ’ ’ 
Letlow, who sat apart, feeling rather remote 
from his kind, grinned at this. “It gives me 
confidence in you. Incidentally, it reminds 
me of certain air-castles which I have been 
building in weak moments. I could not deny 
myself the pleasure of picturing a summer 
vacation with you down at Martha’s Vine- 
yard, or some place where we were sure to 
meet a lot of people we knew. I indulged in 
fancies of the pretty triumphs you would have, 
of a nature which it is not now necessary to 
enlarge upon, and how I should rejoice in the 

19 


The Edge of Things 


light of reflected popularity. I tried to per- 
suade myself that this would be the best thing 
for you, and that I should be almost certain 
to run across some old friend who would help 
me to place you just right — something in the 
wholesale line, you know, or something jour- 
nalistic or scientific.” 

Letlow choked on some unknown sub- 
stance, and the muscles of Dilling’s face 
worked slightly. There was a break in the 
lady’s voice as she continued: 

“But I know all that was cowardly, Dil, 
and that you’d want to face the issue — I mean 
the — the exigency. You’re just like your 
father about that. He always felt moved to 
face a situation, particularly if it was very 
disagreeable. Now, you think the matter 
over, decide what you want to do, and go and 
do it.” The tone became quite brisk and 
businesslike at this point. 

“You’ll go out and make discoveries — 
countries and men and women, or a woman — 
and Heaven knows what of sorrow and joy. 
But as for me, there are no discoveries that I 
care to make in this world. I never did 
attach so much importance to knowledge as 
some do. There’s only time to acquire an 


20 


The Man at the Edge of Things 


infinitesimal bit at the best, and it doesn’t 
answer the questions a woman is really inter- 
ested in, when you get it. No one is wise 
enough to answer the important questions. 
One must take everything that is really im- 
portant on faith. I’m sending you away in 
faith, Dilling. I expect good things of you; 
not necessarily great things. Great things 
are disturbing and very pronounced, Dil. I 
don’t care for you to be pronounced.” 

The young man laughed through a lump 
in his throat, lifted the slender old hand to his 
lips, and left the room. Letlow, who re- 
mained behind, wondered why he had not 
been fortunate enough to have some one in- 
coherent over him. He arose, with his hands 
in his pockets, and walked up and down the 
floor once or twice. Then he stopped beside 
Miss Betty. The tears were rolling down her 
cheeks. He stood a moment regarding them, 
then stooped very tenderly and wiped them 
away. Miss Betty glanced up, and perceived 
the look in his face. 

“ My dear son!” she exclaimed, instinct- 
ively using the word he needed. He sank 
almost unconsciously on his knees. “God 
bless you and keep you in the ways of right- 


The Edge of Things 


eousness, ” she said, her hands on his head. 
Then he, too, went out of the room. 

Miss Betty sat for several minutes, letting 
the tears fall without checking them. Then 
she arose and looked about the room as if she 
had never seen it before. She observed its 
quaint orderliness, its odd, beautiful old fur- 
nishings, its noncommittal tones. She looked 
at herself, undersized, quaint, and plain, too, 
like her environment, as she was reflected in 
the gilt-framed mirror between the windows. 
She noted the thinness of her hair about the 
temples, saw the loose yellow folds of flesh 
about the neck, smiled at the inconsistency of 
the pearls upon her hand — they had been 
given her long ago by a man who went to 
India, and who, going once with a promise on 
his lips, never returned, because of a tidal 
wave on some forgotten shore — and then she 
wound the old clock, standing on a stool to 
do it, closed the windows, closed the door, 
lighted a candle, and blew out the lamps. 

“I shall be more lonely than I have ever 
been before, ’ ’ she said to the clock. 

She climbed the stairs slowly, very slowly, 
and half-way up she stopped. * ‘ It must be, ’ ’ 
she murmured, “that I have forgotten some- 


22 


The Man at the Edge of Things 


thing — the windows or the clock. ’ ’ So she 
went back, picking her way on the polished 
stairs. But she had neglected nothing, and 
she crept up the stairs again, scolding herself 
with impatient “tut tut tuts.” 

An hour later she lay in bed, still with 
wide-open eyes. The door of her room was 
pushed back softly, and she saw Dilling creep- 
ing in. She made a feint of sleeping. In 
another moment he was gone, and a soft per- 
fume saluted her. She put out her hand, and 
there was a bunch of mignonette on her pillow. 

“He has great perception,” she com- 
mented to herself. “He understands women. 
When he makes up his mind to win a woman, 
he will win her. But I’m glad he doesn’t 
fall in love with every foolish child he meets.” 

Up in Letlow’s room the young men were 
debating the affairs of life gravely, and can- 
vassing various occupations and chances for 
investment. 

“Well, anyhow,” said Dilling in conclu- 
sion — a conclusion at which no conclusions 
had been reached — “I’m glad I let dear Aunt 
Bet take the lead. I’ve been fuming to be in 
the harness ever since we got home, and a 
good while before,' for the matter of that. 

23 


The Edge of Things 


But I bethought me that the least I could do 
was to let Aunt Betty enjoy the idea of having 
set me in motion. She likes authority, and I 
didn’t want to deprive her of the exercise of 
the least particle of it, you see.” 

“I see, Dil. I see you’re a shade too 
adroit. Now I should never think of that — 
not in ten thousand years. If you ever start 
out to win a woman, Dil, you will win her all 
right enough.” Which inference, it will be 
remembered, had once before been drawn 
under that roof, that evening. 

”1 hope so — devoutly! If I ever do see a 
woman I want, Tommy, heaven have mercy 
on her. But why speak of women? You are 
better than many women, Tommy.” 


24 


A Touch of the Real Thing 


A Touch of the Real Thing 

“Coo-ee! Coo-ee! Coo-ee!” 

Dilling Brown sent out the long, wavering 
sheep-call in unaccustomed tones. He had 
ridden five days beside the sheep, and slept 
four nights in the midst of them. With him 
were two blond men, long-haired, blue-eyed, 
dressed in khaki ponchos, corduroy trousers, 
buff leather leggins, sombreros, and spurs — 
above all, spurs. Each carried two pistols in 
his belt and a rifle slung across his saddle. 
Also there followed twelve good dogs and true 
— shepherds every one. Finally came one 
sallow heathen, Li Lung, commissariat, driv- 
ing the mules of the supply wagon. 

They were bound for the Edge of Things, 
where the free grass grew — past the ranches 
in the foothills of the Sierra Nevadas, past the 
leased land of the big sheep ranges, out to the 
“common” thoughtfully provided by the legis- 
lature of California. 

“And now,” asked the government, 
“what earthly objection can there be to free 

27 


The Edge of Things 


wool? Isn’t it time we got over being pro- 
vincial, we provincials? See, we give you a 
chance for clear profit. Go, my sons, and 
become very rich.” 

Dilling Brown was pleased at the sugges- 
tion, and adopted it. That was why he was 
driving with Big Hank — otherwise Henry 
Nettle — and Cross-Eyed Kit — otherwise 
Christopher Huggins — along the trackless 
waste of the California desert. He had en- 
tered upon his venture with intelligence, so he 
congratulated himself. He might have picked 
his sheep on the western slopes of the Sierras, 
but hearing of a lot across the range, he pre- 
ferred to take his chances with them, rather 
than run the risks attendant upon crossing the 
pass. The sheep were a good lot, all Cots- 
wolds; a little thin and jaded from removal, 
but capable of being put in prime condition. 
So Cross-Eyed Kit opined; and when it came 
to a pronunciamento upon sheep from Cross- 
Eyed Kit there were none to gainsay. 

At the last ranch Brown was urged to stay 
over night, and he consented. 

“I’m eager to see what’s before me,” he 
said, “but not so eager that I’ll not be glad to 
accept your hospitality. ’ ’ 

28 


A Touch of the Real Thing 


Papin, the overseer at the Esmeralda ranch 
— you can tell the Esmeralda sheep by two 
notches in the left ear — smiled enigmatically, 
and looked Brown straight in the eyes. 

“There’s plenty of time,” protested he. 

“Time!” cried Brown, with the smile that 
won men’s hearts. “There’s nothing but 
time and sheep. That’s all they have out in 
this country, isn’t it?” 

“And these.” Papin passed the cigars. 
Brown fingered one and sniffed it. “Ah!” 
said he, “it is difficult to escape civilization.” 

“I’m glad you like the brand. We man- 
age to make ourselves rather comfortable here. 
This ranch belongs to Leonard and Filbin of 
San Francisco. They’re in everything pretty 
much — mines and mills and sheep and what 
not. I’ve been managing for them for three 
years now, and we’ve eight thousand merinos 
out at grass, and a force of fifty men, first 
and last.” 

Dilling smoked and looked about him. 
The house was adobe, and it rambled over an 
unconscionable amount of ground. An array 
of fantastic cacti writhed and twisted about 
the little compound in front, and as they 
showed symmetry in their arrangement, it 

29 


The Edge of Things 


was safe to infer that this was some one’s 
idea of a flower garden. 

“It’s the sort of a flower garden I should 
expect the Devil to have,” thought Billing. 

The overseer had his rooms on one side of 
the house, the office in the center, and beyond 
the quarters for the men, between whom and 
the overseer, as the newcomer already fully 
appreciated, discipline and custom fixed a 
deep gulf. This amused him. That the 
wilderness should have an aristocracy and an 
etiquette he considered to be “worth the price 
of admission, ” as he had confided to one man. 
But the man had not laughed, and then Brown 
came to a realizing sense that it does not do 
to be amused at a country till you are out of it. 

His present host was a tall, firmly knit 
American, with a hint of something French 
about him. Dilling admired the type, re- 
membering what the men who belonged to it 
had done in America. It stood for much 
daring and adventure. The man had percep- 
tion, too — enough to persuade him to silence 
while his guest took cognizance of things 
about him. After a time a Chinaman ap- 
peared at the door, and with a single blow on 
a tiny tom-tom, announced supper. 


30 







“BY JOVE! THAT'S FINE." 



A Touch of the Real Thing 


“Wait ten minutes longer, Sam,” said 
Papin. “I hear the men coming, and I want 
this gentleman to see them.” 

The Chinaman grinned, and held up the 
tom-tom knowingly for silence. Brown had 
been conscious for several seconds that some- 
thing unusual was happening to his eardrum. 
Now he discovered that this persistent con- 
cussion was the even and rhythmical hammer- 
ing of the plain by a body of advancing horse. 
The east was golden, catching its splendor 
from the burnished west, and out of the lesser 
glory rode the herders, four abreast, on their 
broncos, without swerve. 

“By Jove!” cried Brown, standing up, 
“that’s fine!” 

As the men came nearer the spectacle grew 
more imposing. The little beasts under the 
men flung their legs with a strange outreach- 
ing motion, and every animal went without a 
check, his nose groundward. The men were 
a trifle above the average height, and their 
hair, long and much cared for, floated in the 
breeze made by their riding. They looked 
very handsome, helped out as they were by 
the background of illumined space. 

“Good boys! Good boys!” said Papin, 

31 


The Edge of Things 


proudly. “They’re quite a body of men, 
Mr. Brown, and easy to manage, though they 
have their peculiarities like the rest of us. A 
small guard of men does with the sheep at 
night, and most of the dogs stay with the 
herd, though some of them come home each 
night. And they’re as anxious as the men to 
get their turn off. ’ ’ 

The herders were running their horses into 
the corral, and Louis Papin took his guest out 
to the dining-room. There was a good meal, 
well served — a meal with salad and wine — 
and under its influence the ranchman became 
sympathetic. 

“It isn’t just what I would choose for a 
young man,’’ he said, speaking of Brown’s 
venture, “but of course, now you’re in for a 
spell of ranching, the only thing you can do is 
to get all you can out of the experience.” 

“What’s the seamy side?” 

“Oh, what you might expect: loneliness, 
and no women, and no news, and no coming 
and going of your kind. The sheep wear on 
you, after a time. They’re not like cattle — 
haven’t got the movement nor the brains. 
You’ve seen the Sargasso Sea? No? Well, 
you’ve seen moving masses of seaweed. The 

32 


A Touch of the Real Thing 


sheep remind me of them at times — a writh- 
ing, restless, half-alive, wholly unintelligent 
body. I don’t know as the men feel that way 
about it. Besides, it’s not so hard on them 
— this life. They have good times together. 
It’s different when a man’s placed as I am. 
Some of the owners settle on their ranches 
and bring their families out. There’s Herrick, 
impresario for Stebbins of Los Angeles, who 
has his family with him. But I’ve no family 
to bring, so I make up my accounts, and look 
after the men, and ride about among the 
sheep, and attend to a thousand and one 
details. Sometimes the men get sick and 
have to be taken care of. Once in a while 
an epidemic of homesickness breaks out, and 
that’s harder to deal with than the fever. 

t 

Now and then they quarrel, but I keep out of 
their fights. And, on the whole, they regu- 
late themselves very well.” 

So he rambled on cheerfully, giving Brown 
an idea of the life. Diking ventured some 
confidences on his own account, and the older 
man received them almost in silence, regard- 
ing his guest with a look which, had he been 
in any sort of hard luck, Diking would have 
interpreted as pitying. They went out to the 

33 


The Edge of Things 


quarters, later, passing down the long room 
where the men bunked, to the eating-room. 
They were all smoking there together, and 
two Chinamen were clearing away the remains 
of the meal. Diking stopped on the threshold 
and looked about him with unfeigned enjoy- 
ment of a new scene. 

The long, low room, crowded with muscu- 
lar fellows, blond almost to the last man of 
them, with streaming, delicate hair, faces the 
color of their saddles, and a manner born of 
breaking their horses, managing their sheep, 
and fearlessly looking the wilderness in the 
face, was a thing to see and to remember. 
The smile with which Diking made visible 
record of his interest, won, as it invariably did, 
friends for him at the minute. The men 
smiled back, and they frankly took cognizance 
of him, and liked the way he was “put up,” 
and the bold and amiable eyes with which he 
returned their glances. 

“Well,” said Papin, in a patriarchal tone, 
“I’ve quite a family, Mr. Brown.” 

Brown let out his characteristic roar of 
laughter at this, and the men found it infec- 
tious. So there was good feeling estab- 
lished. 


34 


A Touch of the Real Thing 


“They are always pleased when my visi- 
tors talk with them,” murmured Louis Papin, 
under his breath, to his guest. “It’s a dull 
life they lead, poor boys, and a new story 
pleases them to the core.” 

Brown nodded, still keeping his eyes on 
the men. 

“So these are what you call shepherds!” 
he cried, gayly. “I thought shepherds 
dressed in pink and white china, and always 
went with little blue and white shepherdesses, 
and played on reeds, like this,” and he made 
a mimic piping with his lips — a trick he had 
learned from an English boy. 

“Go on!” shouted the men. “Go on! 
Give us some more music. You don’t need 
no cornet. Keep ’er up.” 

“Not till I have seen the shepherdesses!” 
persisted Brown. “Where are the shepherd- 
esses?” 

The men chuckled, pleased as schoolboys. 

“Now, how the dickens did the fellow know 
they were like children?” Papin was wonder- 
ing to himself. “He’s adroit — but I saw 
that from the first. He could manage any- 
body. He ought to be somewhere else — not 
down here among the cactus. Poor cuss, it’s 

35 


The Edge of Things 


a sorry fate for him. What a waste the girls 
must think it — him among the cactus!” 
When he emerged from his reflections, Brown 
was singing Little Bo-Peep according to a 
college version. 

“ That’s positively the only song I know 
which refers to your — your profession,” he 
bowed, as the men applauded him. 

“Goin’ to try ranchin’ it, sir?” asked one 
of the men, respectful but curious. 

Brown seated himself on the edge of the 
table, the better to look over his audience. 

“HI explain myself,” he said, frankly. 
“I’m just out of college, and in the soup. 
That’s why I came here to raise sheep.” 

“That’s right! Here’s the place t’ be, 
under them circumstances.” 

“And if you’re wanting some stories — ” 

“Put it thar, pard!” 

“ — why, the only sort of yarns I know are 
college yarns, and I can sing college songs, 
if you want those — ” There was wild en- 
couragement with whistlings and caterwauls, 
and it was almost midnight when he left. 

“You’ve made yourself solid,” declared 
Papin, as he shook hands with his guest at 
the chamber door that night. “If you ever 

36 


A Touch of the Real Thing 


get in trouble let my men know it, and they’ll 
be with you. ’ ’ 

As the men rolled in their bunks that 
night, laughing and repeating snatches of the 
ringing nonsensical songs that Brown had 
given them, they remarked with freedom, and 
sometimes with unnecessary emphasis, “That 
there coot’s a gentleman. No up-in-the-bal- 
loon-boys about him. He’s right on your 
own level, he is. He’s the real thing!” All 
of which was an involved way of saying that 
Brown’s manners were what they ought 
to be. 

Breakfast was served at dawn at the Esmer- 
alda, and the east was “blossomed in purple 
and red” when Brown stood before the door 
with his host, watching the men get up their 
ponies. 

“How far do you intend to ride beyond 
this?” asked the manager. 

“God knows,” said Brown. “I ride till 
I come to grass which is no other man’s, but 
mine by the courtesy of the state of Cali- 
fornia.” 

Papin called up a genial-looking fellow with 
saddle-bowed legs. 

“Where’s that empty adobe you were t ell- 

37 


The Edge of Things 


ing me of the other day, Bob? The one 
young Cusack and his sister had. ’ ’ 

‘ ‘ Going with the sheep, sir, it would be a 
day’s ride east,” responded the man, touch- 
ing the edge of his sombrero, “and half a 
day’s ride south. It can’t be missed, for to 
reach it you turn at the chaparral beyond the 
Salita arroyo, and follow that due south.” 

“Can you remember that, Mr. Brown?” 
asked Papin, with a smile. 

“Of course. It’s a house that I might 
feel at liberty to occupy? It would save me 
a good deal of bother if I could. ’ ’ 

“It’s yours when you hang up your hat. 
Fred Cusack and his sister were there for a 
time.” 

“What made them leave?” 

The herder started to speak, but Papin 
frowned and shook his head at him. 

“Cusack lost his health,” he said, shortly. 
“That will do, Bob. Tell the boys to mount. 
I want Mr. Brown to see you ride off. ’ ’ 

A minute later there was a sound that 
made the blood rush to Brown’s face — a long, 
wavering, fierce cry, the war cry of the 
Apaches. But it was not the Apaches who 
made it. It was^ forty long-locked men, rid- 

38 


A Touch of the Real Thing 


ing four abreast into the incarnadined east; 
and they went madly, fast as equine legs 
could take them, over the dusty plain, and as 
they went they yelled. Brown stood fasci- 
nated till the dust hid the men; and even then 
the wild, wavering cry came back. 

“My powers!” said he, dropping into a 
chair and taking a cup of coffee from the smil- 
ing Chinaman, “it’s good to be alive and to 
have seen that!” 

Louis Papin looked at the boy and flushed 
a little. Then he glanced down half-humor- 
ously at his own beard, and carefully drawing 
out a white hair from the midst of it, he laid 
it on the palm of his hand and regarded it 
sentimentally. 

“It certainly is good to be young — as you 
are, Mr. Brown.” 

“Why, as you are, too, Mr. Papin! What 
can you mean, sir, by thinking yourself any- 
thing else but young?” He looked in un- 
feigned astonishment at the strong, firm, keen 
man before him. 

“I have a malady,” confessed Papin, 
“and it has aged me.” 

“Ah!” 

“Shall i tell you the name of it?” 

39 


The Edge of Things 


“Why, if you please, Mr. Papin.” 

“It is a fatal thing. Eventually it causes 
ossification of the — of the heart.” 

“Eh?” 

“Yes, there is such a thing. It is an 
inextinguishable ennui.” 

He spoke with such solemnity that Brown 
was forced to look sympathetic, though when 
he heard the nature of Papin’s alleged dis- 
order, he could with difficulty keep from 
smiling. 

“But why have you not married, sir, and 
surrounded yourself with a family? Or 
brought some man out here to rough it witfi 
you? There are young fellows who would 
thank their stars for a chance to be with a 
man like you, and to get blooded to this life.” 

Papin smiled sadly. “I’m not so egotisti- 
cal,” he said, “as to suppose that I could 
console any one — any one , no matter what 
our relations might be — for the loss of the 
whole world. ’ ’ 

His head dropped a little, and he and 
Brown sat in silence, drinking their coffee and 
smoking. 

“It must be that he has had some con- 
founded tragedy,” thought Brown, pityingly. 

40 


I 


A Touch of the Real Thing 

“A woman, no doubt. Jove, but some men 
do get awfully cut up! May my day be long 
a-coming!” 

An hour later, with his sheep, his men, 
and his dogs, he rode into the east. It was 
all a mist of dull golden dustiness, and the 
sky above was a pale and half-obscured blue. 
It was the air and the sky of the Californian 
desert in the dry season. Brown was to be- 
come very well acquainted with it. 

“ A day east to the chaparral,” called 
Papin, “then half a day south to the adobe, 
going at the pace the sheep set. Good by, 
Brown! Good by and good luck!” 

“Good by, sir. I ’ll not forget the savor 
of your bread and salt.” 

As he went out, riding slowly beside the 
trotting sheep, one of the dogs came up and 
leaped about him, barking. 

“What is it, girl?” he said, absently. 
“What do you want?” The dog had a 
benevolent face, with a pleasing breadth be- 
tween the eyes, a delicate tapering of the 
nose, a well-rounded brow, and an arrow- 
shaped spot of white at the base of the brain. 
Her feet and belly were a bright tan. Brown 
scrutinized her for several seconds. 

4 1 


The Edge of Things 


“ Your face reminds me of Aunt Betty’s,” 
he said, aloud, and his soliloquy was the first 
token that he was amid the solitudes of earth, 
and that his sub-consciousness appreciated it, 
“though I don’t know whether or not the 
dear old lady would feel complimented to hear 
me say so. But I’m going to name you Bet. 
Hear that? Bet! Bet! Yes, that’s you, 
girl. Why, you’re a pleasant creature. 
What is it that you want, anyway? You flirt, 
I believe you’re trying to make up to me. 
You want to be my dog, eh? My favorite? 
Well, well, that’s a good doggie. That’s all 
right. So, so, Bet. That’s what you want, 
is it?” 

He had brought his pony to a stop to rub 
the dog’s head; but when she had submitted 
to the caressing for a moment, she ran on to 
inform her friends, vociferously, of the event. 
Some of the dogs looked back curiously, but 
others went haughtily on, as if they would 
have nothing to do with toadies. Then Bet 
snapped at a ram who, with his long fleece 
hanging about him, looked as benevolent as a 
patriarch, meaning to show by this exhibition 
of authority that she was the special dog of 
the master. 


42 


A Touch of the Real Thing 


“This seems to be pretty good society that 
I’m moving in, ” thought Brown. “Here, 
Bet, come here!” 

Bet fairly leaped with pride at this impera- 
tive summons, and came back to run along by 
his side. 

Then the sheep got to wandering, and 
Bet’s sharp bark aroused Brown once more to 
a sense of his duties. He flanked the rest- 
less body of animals, and putting his hand to 
his mouth, recalled the stragglers. 

“Coo-ee! Coo-ee! Coo-ee!” 


43 


Dilling Brown Hangs Up His Hat 


Dilling Brown Hangs Up His Hat 

Within a week Dilling Brown was settled 
in his new home. At least he had settled all 
save one room in it. The house was of adobe, 
built on three sides of a square. The open 
side of the square stood toward the west, and 
within the court was one stunted and dusty 
gum-tree. A quarter of a mile to the east 
ran a belt of chaparral, composed of pine 
scrub, and most fatally a trap for the Cots- 
wolds, whose long hair became easily en- 
tangled. To keep the sheep out of this snare 
was the task of dogs and men; and as the 
sheep could never learn a lesson, though they 
lived to be older than any crocodile of the 
Ganges, their shepherds had a hard time of 
it. Brown had too small a force, as a matter 
of fact, considering his twelve hundred sheep, 
but it was all he could afford, and he did a 
common herder’s work himself to help make 
up the deficiency. The dogs proved to be as 
fine a pack as man could wish. Brown could 
stand upon a hillock and whistle, and in two 

47 


The Edge of Things 


seconds every soft canine eye would be turned 
in his direction. Then he had only to indi- 
cate by a gesture to the right or the left what 
sheep needed recalling, and they were recalled. 
If any dog was lax in his duty, Bet saw to his 
instant punishment. 

It was evident that the house which Brown 
had taken possession of had been vacated sud- 
denly. The furniture still stood in the rooms, 
though indeed it was such poor stuff that it 
would have been worth the while of no one to 
cart it back to civilization. But many per- 
sonal effects remained which would certainly 
have been taken away, had not the occu- 
pants departed in haste and confusion which 
rendered them indifferent to their belong- 
ings. 

The room which Dilling had left undis- 
turbed, and into which he had put nothing of 
his own, was at the northwest corner of the 
house, and it was a bedroom. One window, 
sunk deep in the adobe wall, looked toward 
the north over miles upon miles of undulating, 
broad-leafed grass. On the window-ledge 
was a dusty wicker work-basket, and in it 
thread and other accessories of such a con- 
venience, including a thimble. It was a com- 

48 


Dilling Brown Hangs Up His Hat 


mon little thimble of blue celluloid, worth, in 
the coin of the commonwealth, about three 
cents. Dilling tried it on his smallest finger, 
and it would not cap it. The narrow iron bed 
was thick with dust, and the young man stood 
before it several seconds trying to realize that 
it had once been dainty and fresh. There 
was a dressing-table made of a packing-box, 
draped, like the bed, with sheer white stuff; 
but the articles which once designated its use 
were gone, save a folding mirror which hung 
above it, suspended by a blue ribbon. A low 
chair stood before the table, and by the win- 
dow was a rocker. Some rude but shapely 
jugs were on a shelf above the small fireplace, 
and it was evident that the former occupant 
of the room had experimented in elemental 
ceramics. There were no pictures. Two 
things more remained to suggest the person- 
ality of her who had used the room. One 
was a little riding glove which lay forlornly 
under the bed, and which Brown rescued from 
its plight, placing it on the dusty dressing- 
table. The other was an inscription in ram- 
bling letters upon the wall above the fireplace. 
It was well done— the lettering — with a bold 
hand: 


49 


The Edge of Things 


“He, watching over Israel, slumbereth 
not nor sleeps.” 

“A curious thing for a young girl to 
write,” mused Brown, regarding it; “but 
perhaps she needed to be reminded of that 
fact out here. It 'might be easy to forget 
most things, I should think, even the reli- 
gion of one’s fathers. I suppose she put it 
there for a sort of stationary sermon. ’ ’ 

He sat down in the rocker and looked 
across space — dusty green beneath, dusty 
blue above — to the place where the blue came 
down and touched the green, all in a blur of 
dustiness. 

“But I wonder,” he reflected at the end 
of ten minutes, “if she was a young girl. 
And I wonder if it is possible that Papin 
could tell me.” 

The fourth day of his residence in his new 
home, Brown fastened the rear door of this 
room, so that no one could enter it. The 
other doorway led into the room which had 
obviously been used for a sitting-room, and 
which Brown employed for the same purpose. 
There was no door in the opening, so he made 
a portiere of gunny-sacking and hung it up. 
He regarded this with satisfaction for two 

50 


Dilling Brown Hangs Up His Hat 


evenings. Then it occurred to him that it 
was severely plain. So he took some dull 
red paint and smudged lizards on it — conven- 
tionalized lizards. 

“My uncle, but that looks decorative!” 
said Brown, with pride. “I fancy that would 
have pleased her immensely. She seems to 
have had a decided feeling for the pictur- 
esque.” He smoked and regarded his work 
at leisure. “I really think she’d feel pleased, 
if she could see it,” he remarked again. 

He got some letters from home a month 
later. There was a large package of them, 
with papers and magazines. Papin was re- 
sponsible for this boon, for he had arranged 
to send mail across the desert in relays, each 
man forwarding it from his ranch to the next, 
till the outposts were reached. It was he 
who had thought to add to the list of the ex- 
iled the name of the man at the Edge of 
Things. The letters from Aunt Betty were 
very beautiful to him, though full of half-con- 
cealed jealousy of his new interests, and a 
patient wonder why he could not manage to 
reach the mail at least every other day. She 
was well pleased, however, at the work he 

had chosen for himself, and she imagined soft 

« 

51 


The Edge of Things 


green pastures with running brooks, and a 
pretty painted farmhouse with muslin curtains 
at the windows. Dilling got some grim 
amusement out of the idea. He was sitting 
on a bench in the court at the time, for it was 
noon, and by the'side of the eastern wall was 
to be found the only inch of shade. The 
Chinaman had done the best he could to make 
the place clean, but the dust drifted in every- 
where, and as Dilling looked about him, and 
then re-read his aunt’s letters, and thought of 
the difference between the mental picture 
entertained by the dear lady and the swelter- 
ing and desolate reality, a wave of homesick- 
ness came along, and being unexpected, it 
nearly swept him off his feet, figuratively 
speaking. He came very near doing some- 
thing which he had not done since he was a 
boy, and to save himself he had to be violent, 
so he said, “Blast that gum-tree!” and he 
darted a glance at it which carried yet more 
fervent maledictions. It was certainly a mis- 
erable gum-tree, shriveled and begrimed with 
dust, and out of place in a land which endeav- 
ored conscientiously to devote itself to scrub 
pine and grass. 

“I’d even play tennis with those lemonade 

5 2 


Dilling Brown Hangs Up His Hat 


girls, and be glad to do it,” thought poor 
Dilling, laughing at his own discomfiture. 

Li Lung, he of the kitchen, put out his old 
ivory head to see what the gentleman meant 
by talking when there was no one with whom 
to speak. Then he nodded sagely, and made 
a cool drink with water and claret, and set it 
in the inner room, to coax the gentleman out 
of the sun. 

But Dilling was a long, long way from dis- 
couragement. He thought he saw a bright 
future for himself. The sheep were prosper- 
ing. The men with him proved to be faith- 
ful, and to understand their business. The 
dogs were a good lot, and Bet was all that a 
friend could be. So, if time dragged a trifle, 
it did not matter. If the dawns were some- 
what too vivid, the days too monotonous with 
their pale gold dustiness, the land breezes of 
the night a hint too oppressive, and the stars 
somewhat too silent and slow in their rising 
and setting, it was all an incident. He had 
come to secure for himself an independency, 
and in an ancient and honorable fashion — a 
fashion that was ancient and honorable when 
David of the hills of Bethlehem was young. 
Dilling looked about him, made up his mind 

53 


The Edge of Things 


that he had done well, set his shoulders a 
degree nearer the square, and remarked to 
Bet that he was all right. 

“Though I do wish, Bet,” he said, “that 
the music of the spheres would make itself 
audible. I wouldn’t care if they buzzed like 
sawmills, old doggie, so they broke up this 
silence. Bark, Bet, bark — yap, you miser- 
able girl! Make a noise, I say!” And Bet 
obediently insulted the moon with opprobrious 
remarks, as the blood-red planet showed her 
head above the chaparral. 

Letlow wrote that he was doing a report- 
er’s work on a New York daily, and making 
a fool of himself generally. He had an idea 
of going up to see Aunt Betty before autumn 
was over. He promised to play tennis, too, 
for old time’s sake. “Though I find,” he 
supplemented, “that there are girls even in 
New York. There is, for example, one 
named — ” But after all, it is not necessary to 
betray Letlow’ s secrets. Dilling got to think- 
ing, of course, of the foolish days of the tennis- 
court, and he wondered why he had laughed 
so much. No wonder Dorcas Pilsbury had 
asked Tommy if he had any religious convic- 
tions! “No doubt she’d think me serious 


54 


Dilling Brown Hangs Up His Hat 


enough now, if she could see me,” he re- 
flected. She was serious, and so was Anice 
Comstock, with her kind, gray eyes. What 
a brisk frou-frou her skirts used to make when 
she ran about the tennis-ground, and what 
adorable little feet she had, as they showed in 
her white tennis shoes! Anice Comstock was 
certainly much nicer than Dorcas Pilsbury. 
But there were many pleasant things back in 
“the rotten old town” — Aunt Betty’s fragrant 
tea at five of the afternoon, and Aunt Betty 
pouring it, and smiling and chatting, and the 
piping of bluebirds without in the elms, and 
Sundays at the old church, and — and Anice 
Comstock. He fell into a reverie which lasted 
a long time, and at the conclusion of it he 
was conscious of a definite idea. It was that 
Anice Comstock would not have written, “He, 
watching over Israel, slumbereth not nor 
sleeps,” in an adobe house in a sun-cursed 
desert. Not but that Anice was good enough 
to have written it. She was, indeed, a sort 
of angel, with starched drapery (Dilling could 
not get that frou-frou out of his memory) ; but 
she wasn’t an angel with a knowledge of the 
desert, or what was needed for comfort in the 
desert, and that happened to be just the sort 

55 


The Edge of Things 

of woman that he was pleased to think about 
then. 

It so chanced that Louis Papin came up, 
three weeks after this, to see how Brown was 
getting on. They spent two days together, 
and enjoyed themselves. Papin had his tat- 
tered Shakespeare with him — but hasn’t that 
been mentioned before? That rag of a book 
was always with him. The two read from 
that; and they smoked; and there is always 
poker wherever there is civilized man. But 
from first to last, Brown bided his chance. 
At last it came. 

“The Cusacks were very obliging to leave 
this snug house for you, eh, Brown?” 

“Very. I’d like to thank them. Do you 
know where they are?” 

“No-q — not exactly.” 

“And the girl — was she young? Miss 
Cusack, I mean.” 

“Katherine Cusack? O yes, she was 
young — quite young. A fine, brave girl. 
Had the spirit of a man in her.” 

“That’s your arrogance. It was probably 
the spirit of a woman, if it was brave.” 

“Very likely. She was beautiful, too, in 
a way; small, but strong, and exceedingly 

56 


Dilling Brown Hangs Up His Hat 

active, and always saying the unexpected 
thing. I saw her twice: once when she went 
past my place coming out here, and — and 
when she came back. ’ ’ 

“Why didn’t you see her more?” ques- 
tioned Brown; with something like asperity. 

“Why, to tell the truth, man, I thought — 
I thought I’d better mind my own business. 
Not that I wanted to.” 

There were a hundred more questions that 
Brown meant to ask, but Papin got off on 
another lead, and Brown could not get him 
back again. 


57 



Brown Has an Obsession 







Brown Has an Obsession 


As the weeks went on, trailing along as 
slowly as wounded snakes, as the wool length- 
ened on the sheep, and the hair hung lower 
on the shoulders of the herders, and the pecu- 
liarities of every animal became known, and 
all the papers and magazines were read over 
and over again, the propriety of that sentence 
in the room behind the gunny-sacking portiere 
became more and more apparent. 

When Dilling rode up from the sheep, sun- 
blinded, foul with dust and sweat, and weary 
from the saddle, he got into the way of going 
to that room before supper, because he de- 
rived a warm sense of companionship from the 
thought of the girl who had once been there, 
and from the atmosphere that still made of it 
an oasis in a barren land. The excellent and 
cleanly heathen had restored the muslins of 
the little northwest room to their native state, 
for which Dilling was disproportionately grate- 
ful; for now the room looked as if it might, 
at any hour, welcome its mistress. Dilling 

61 


The Edge of Things 


would look about, seem to salute an invisible 
presence, and then lift his eyes to the message 
on the wall, which, in the course of long and 
yet longer days, began to have the deepest of 
meanings for him, so that the soul of him, 
there in the wilderness, submitted itself, and 
was at peace with its Maker. 

Then the days for shearing came on, and 
actively hard work served as a diversion, and 
aroused the young ranchman’s drooping hope. 
The results of his deprivations and toil were 
almost apparent, he told himself. He would 
presently know the satisfaction that arises from 
accumulating herds. He would hold honestly 
acquired money in his hands, and the bitterness 
of the solitude would be partly compensated 
for. As, day by day, the shearlings multiplied 
in number, and the clad sheep grew fewer, this 
feeling of contentment increased. The long 
clipped wool was a goodly thing to behold, 
and Diking felt a simple pride in it; and in 
the evenings he sang songs for the benefit of 
Bet and the kindly heathen in the kitchen. 
He had arranged for the transportation of the 
wool with Papin, who was sending it on to 
Philadelphia that year. So the supply wagon 
went back and forth between the Esmeralda 


62 


Brown Has an Obsession 


Ranch and the Edge of Things, and the last 
time out Cross-Eyed Kit went with it, with 
instructions to go on to the foothills for pro- 
visions. 

The next three weeks passed more quickly. 
Dilling had double work because Kit was 
away, and every other night he slept in the 
open with the dogs beside the sheep. Things 
appeared to be moving, and he grew loqua- 
cious with elation, and wrote voluminous let- 
ters which he intended to send to Letlow some 
time, using the leaves of his memorandum 
book for the purpose. Almost every day he 
made additions to another letter — a very long 
one — which he never intended to send to any 
one; but it was addressed to Miss Katherine 
Cusack. 

“I reckon yeh never heard what happened 
t’ young Cusack, who was here before yeh, 
sir?” asked Big Hank of Brown one morning, 
as they skirted the chaparral together, after 
driving back the stragglers. 

“No, I don’t know the particulars. I 
heard he lost his health. ’ ’ 

“Went off his nut, sir' — clean off. It wuz 
queer, too, him havin’ his sister with him, and 
enj’ing th’ pleasures of society, s’ t’ speak. 

63 


The Edge of Things 


He worked pretty hard, I reckon, an’ wuz out 
with th’ sheep alone most of th’ time — he wuz 
short-handed, same ez you, sir. They say he 
got s’ used t’ keepiiT his tongue in his head 
that he wouldn’t speak even when he got th’ 
chanct. Well, I’ll be ’ternal damned if he 
didn’t drop down ’longside th’ sheep one 
day, an’ take t’ eatin’ grass! His man found 
him thar, eatin’ it, when he come out t’ take 
th’ watch. He didn’t know what t’ do, an’ 
he rode back like blazes to th’ ranch, an’ 
Cusack’s sister, she got on her pony, an’ 
streaked out — it was five miles she had to go. 
An’ thar he was, a-eatin’ grass! She got down 
by him, an’ called him, an’ petted him, an’ 
cried over him, an’ all he said was, ‘Baa! baa!’ 
One of th’ men at th’ Esmeralda tol’ me.” 

‘‘Great God! And then what did his sis- 
ter do?” 

‘‘She had him lifted in th’ saddle, an’ she 
walked an’ held him thar, all the way to th’ 
house. Then she treated him fur fever, an’ 
kep’ coolin’ things to his head. She thought 
it might h’ bin th’ sun. But ’t were more’n 
sun. Then she took him in th’ supply wagon 
back across th’ trail, her Chinee a-drivin’, and 
they say she went up to her ol’ home in San 

6 + 


Brown Has an Obsession 


Francisco. Howsome that may be, th’ rail- 
road authorities, they wouldn’t let him in a 
passenger-coach, an’ she went off ridin’ in th’ 
baggage-car, a-holdin’ of his head an’ com- 
fortin’ him. They said he never thanked her 
none. He jus’ said, ‘Baa! baa!’ an’ cried 
’cause they wouldn’t let him out t’ th’ grass.” 

“But where are they now?” 

“I hain’t heard, sir. ” 

“Why have you never told me this story 
before, Hank?” 

“Well, Mr. Papin he give it out col’ an ’ 
flat that you wa’n’t to be tol’. But yer so 
steady now, sir, I know it don’t cut no ice.” 

“No,” said Brown, and he set spur to his 
pony and rode on. 

But he was not able, either by day or by 
night, to banish the vision of the man who 
had dropped on all fours beside his sheep and 
given tongue with them. 

Some time before Brown had tamed a 
pretty wether to run about the doorstep; he 
and Bet made great friends of it, feeding it 
and teasing it, and teaching it to curl up 
nights on a bed of hay in the court. But 
now the little creature became offensive to 
him, and he resented its intimacy. When it 

65 


The Edge of Things 


came to him, where he sat smoking evenings 
before his door, and rubbed its head against 
his leg, he had trouble to keep from an out- 
break of anger. In the grotesque twilight, 
when the cacti looked like hobgoblins, and 
Bet’s eyes grew phosphorescent, and Lung 
crooned an awful song in a heathen tongue, 
Brown got fanciful, and it seemed as if Dickie 
Bird — the little wether — were inviting him to 
drop down on all fours with him and say, 
“baa, ” as any sociable creature ought to do, 
looking at the matter, of course, from Dickie 
Bird’s point of view. But, as a matter of 
fact, at this hour Dickie was on his bed, and 
only awoke to bleat now and then, out of the 
perfect contentment of his — stomach. Brown 
roared over his twilight nonsense the next 
morning, when the sun got up. The only 
trouble was that hejcame near laughing too 
long. It appeared as if, with a trifle of care- 
lessness on the part of Brown, the laugh 
might become the master. 

Kit got back with the supply wagon and a 
few letters, but there was no word from Phila- 
delphia among them. 

“Pshaw!” said Dilling, “I’m no boy, to 
be so impatient over my first earnings. ’ ’ 

66 


Brown Has an Obsession 


Several weeks more passed, while a sort 
of dullness settled down upon the ranch. 
Even Bet seemed to think that things were 
not quite worth while. Then the mail came 
from Papin’s, and with it a letter from Dil- 
ling’s agent at Philadelphia. He regretted to 
inform Mr. Brown that his consignment had 
reached Philadelphia at a time when wool was 
selling at bottom prices, owing to the exten- 
sive introduction of foreign product, and also 
that there had been an unfortunate delay in 
the placing of the wool, thus causing consider- 
able expense for storage. He had the honor, 
however, to remit to Mr. Brown the inclosed 
amount, as per check, and in the hope of serving 
him on future occasions, to remain his very truly. 

Dilling looked at the amount of the check, 
mentally deducted the sum he had paid for 
the freight, and then made a confidence to the 
wether, who was sweetly chewing at the 
doormat. 

“Dickie Bird,” said he, “I am exactly 
seventeen dollars and eighty-five cents out of 
pocket. Figures are a great thing, Dickie 
Bird, and by studying them you may learn a 
great many things which you would not learn 
if you did not study figures.” 

67 


The Edge of Things 


There was a good curry that night for 
supper, and some native claret which Kit had 
brought back with him, but Diking could only 
make a pretense of eating. Moreover, he 
could not sleep except by fits, and then he 
awoke with a cold sweat breaking out over 
him, for he saw a man falling down beside his 
sheep and eating grass. 

He had a determined aversion to taking 
any one into his confidence. Papin, of 
course, was in the same boat. But Papin 
was only the manager of the Esmeralda, and 
he had a rich firm behind him. The fluctua- 
tions of trade did not greatly disturb the 
serenity of his soul, and they in no way de- 
tracted from the pleasure to be derived from 
a perusal of the pages of Shakespeare of 
Stratford. But Aunt Betty and Letlow 
should not know. Besides, if Anice Com- 
stock found it out, she would lay it to his 
frivolity. Snug, comfortable, unknowing 
lives they lived, those people back East! It 
would do them good to get out of their oiled 
grooves, and find how the world is made to 
move and how much pushing it takes to move 
it. The man at the Edge of Things was ac- 
cumulating some bitterness. He incidentally 

68 


Brown Has an Obsession 


tore up the letter he had written to Letlow, 
and he did not write to Aunt Betty. Yet to 
the letter which he did not mean to send — 
which he never could send — he made passion- 
ate additions, and the woman who did not 
know him, but who knew so many of the sor- 
rows that he knew, was made the recipient of 
all the secrets of his soul. The drawback to 
that was that she did not know it. 

Papin said there was hope for better for- 
tune in the spring, and Diking comforted him- 
self with belief in this. He had no intention 
of weakening. He had the responsibility of 
the investment, and he meant to justify his 
judgment in his aunt’s eyes. Moreover, he 
could think of nothing else to which he could 
turn his hand. So he strengthened himself 
with the inscription on the wall, daily aug- 
mented the size of the letter which would 
never be sent, and went about his tasks. 

But all his resolution could not keep the 
dead heat of autumn from weighing on him 
like a curse, nor his eyes from aching at the 
distance about him, the absolute vacuity of 
outreaching space. A brawl of street ruf- 
fians would have been a desired drama, since 
it would have furnished a scene of action and 

69 


The Edge of Things 


an evidence of human passion. Even Kit 
and Hank got to wearing on each other; but 
they were old herders, and they knew the 
cause of their irritability, and so regarded it 
as impersonally as possible. Then the mild 
and meaningless winter came on, the winter 
of the southern plain, and the rains fell. The 
men lit fires at night to fight the damp. 
Everything mildewed — cutlery, clothes, and 
books. The sheep were sullen and obstinate, 
and there was nothing, as Diking had said to 
Louis Papin a few months before, but time 
and sheep. 

And in the midst of all this a genuine sor- 
row came to Brown. Aunt Betty passed 
beyond the knowledge of the world — the 
knowledge which she had not held in high 
esteem — to make such discoveries as futurity 
holds. Letlow wrote about it, and how Anice 
Comstock and he had done all that Diking 
would have done had he been there, and how 
Elder Urwin celebrated her virtues in an 
address three-quarters of an hour long, and 
how she was laid with her fathers in the old 
cemetery. 

“The beautiful old house is closed, and is 
waiting for you,” Letlow wrote. “And 

70 


Brown Has an Obsession 


Nettie bids me tell you that she will come 
back to care for it when you want her to do 
so. Meantime, she is living near, and is 
keeping an eye upon dear Aunt Betty’s 
treasures. It grieves me to say it, Dil, but 
you might have cheered her last days more 
than you did. She was forever sending poor 
old Nettie to the post-office, and you know 
yourself how seldom she got what she wanted. 
As for me, you never write to me now. It 
is strange of you, Dil. Of course, if you do 
not want to have anything more to do with 
me, you may go to the bow-wows. But I can- 
not think this is the case. Do not try to live 
without your old friends. They find it hard, 
believe me, to live without you.” 

After that, of course, poor Diking wrote; 
and then to his other sorrows was added the 
pang of unavailing regret. It is a pang which 
almost every one must know, but it was new 
to Diking, and it roweled him like a sharp 
spur. Dear Aunt Betty! Was it possible 
she could have thought him ungrateful? He 
was only waiting to write till he could justify 
himself in her eyes. But she did not know — 
she did not know! She waited for letters 
that did not come, and suspected — what? In 

71 


The Edge of Things 


the loneliness of the rains, Dilling sent his 
soul in search for hers, praying for pardon. 
But he had no sense of forgiveness. The 
dead did not come back to comfort him. 

By the time for the spring shearing his 
funds were almost exhausted, and he confided 
to his men, that unless he realized something 
on his wool the experiment might be consid- 
ered a failure. 

It was just before the day set for the 
shearing that the Mexicans made their first 
raid on him and cut out two hundred sheep. 
The episode was singularly tame. It hap- 
pened at night, and when Big Hank was on 
duty. The sheep were two miles to the south 
of the house, and the night was a clear and 
starlit one. Hank was awake and at his post, 
and he saw the whole thing, which was small 
enough satisfaction. He emptied the contents 
of his revolvers and his rifle, and he had a 
dead horse to show that he had been in 
action, but none of the Mexican bullets hit 
him. That was the only adventure of the 
year. 

There was some profit from the wool that 
spring. “Just enough,” Brown remarked to 
Papin, “to make me feel that it would be 

72 


Brown Has an Obsession 


wrong to give up the business. I’ll stick it 
out, Mr. Papin. I ought to be able to stand 
it, if you can. ’ ’ 

“Why, there’s some difference between 
your situation and mine, Brown. You know 
I saw a little of life before I came. I had my 
day. It happened to end for me rather sud- 
denly, you know — and that’s why I came.” 

“No,” said the younger man, “I didn’t 
know, Mr. Papin.” 

“So you see it doesn’t make very much 
difference to me where I am. I suppose 
Paris would seem as lonesome as the free 
grass country, eh, Brown?” 

“I don’t know, sir. I’d like to have an 
opportunity for comparison.” 

And then Papin read to him the things that 
Jaques said in the forest of Arden. 

The summer came, hot as the mouth of 
the pit. Nothing happened. Oh, yes, Bet 
had puppies, and brought them in, one at a 
time, for Dilling to see, and he made a bed for 
them in his waste-paper basket. And Cross- 
Eyed Kit had the fever, and Brown nursed 
him through it, and hired another man to sub- 
stitute. When Kit got well, it was decided 
to keep the other man, and the bringing of a 

73 


The Edge of Things 


new personality into the company had a good 
effect, particularly as the new man could sing. 
Wool was looking up a little by fall, and 
Brown began once more to feel that there 
might be some return for the investment. 

All the poetry of the life had gone for him 
by this time. He could have enjoyed adven- 
ture, he said to himself, even when accom- 
panied by great hardship and danger, but this 
endless stretch of nothingness was as wearing 
as life in a mephitic dungeon. The wind of 
the morning could no longer elate him, nor 
the stars of the night speak to his soul. A 
nostalgia for his kind seized upon him, and he 
made up conversations, pretending that his 
chosen friends participated in them with him. 
One friend was there whom he had never 
seen, but he always gave her the best things 
to say; and when there was something pecu- 
liarly sensible and dull in the way of a remark, 
he accorded it to Anice Comstock. Letlow 
said some gay things, some irresistible things, 
and Brown roared over them; and then the 
Chinaman peeped in at the door, shaking his 
old ivory head, and slipping away like a rat. 
One day he ventured on some advice in that 
peculiar English which he affected — an Eng- 

74 


Brown Has an Obsession 


lish picked up principally on the ranch, and 
converted into a liquescent lipogram. 

“Mislie Blown,” said he, as he served 
Diking with some canned salmon, into which 
he had introduced a most unchristian quantity 
of red pepper, “loo go see Mislie Papin. It 
good fo’ loo.” 

“Think I need it, Lung?” asked Brown, 
wistfully. 

“Loo need it. Go, Mislie Blown.” He 
nodded his head an incalculable number of 
times, and he did not grin. 

“Lung,” said Brown, slowly, “I believe 
you are serious — and I am sure you are a 
kind creature. I think I’ll go at once. You 
explain to the men,” and to Lung’s unspeak- 
able astonishment, he saddled on the minute 
and made off, Bet following. 

So that night, when the men rode up for 
supper, they found the “boss” off for a 
junket. 

“It do him good,” explained Lung. 

Hank regarded his boots with a pensive 
expression. Suddenly he broke into a yell. 

“Lung,” he shouted, “you heathen, let’s 
holler! Whoop’ er up, Kit! Dance, you 
devils! Hi, dance to this!” And he sang, 

75 


The Edge of Things 


in a terrible voice and a little off-key, some 
words to a silly tune. 

The Chinaman obeyed orders — he was 
wise, and knew how to obey — and now and 
then he broke into the song with a discordant 
croak. 

“I feel better,” said Hank, decorating his 
remark in a manner peculiar to himself. “It 
done me good. I had to do it or bust. I 
wish th’ boss could h’ bin in th’ party.” 

“It done him good,” supplemented Lung. 

“It would, my friend — it would. Now 
make th’ cakes.” 


76 


In Pursuit of the Chimera 


In Pursuit of the Chimera 


The rain was over all the plain, and the 
night shut down dismally. Billing had been 
trailing all day toward the Esmeralda Ranch, 
but as the darkness began to fall he was seized 
with a distaste for his visit. A sodden lan- 
guor pervaded his soul. He marveled that 
the day had gone so soon, and that he was 
not at the end of his journey. But still, what 
did it matter? And why see Papin anyway 
— Papin, who had the “inextinguishable 
ennui, ’ ’ and who read Shakespeare and waited 
for time to roll by. Papin had actually 
learned to let it roll by without taking any of 
the responsibility. He had found out that it 
had been rolling before he was born; that he 
was, personally, an immaterial accident; and 
that the rolling would keep on after the worms 
had banqueted upon him. In short, Papin 
was too philosophic, though a fine fellow. 
Moreover, it was not to be forgotten that he 
had once performed a signal service for the 
listless wanderer there in the rain. He had 


79 


The Edge of Things 


told him the name of Katherine Cusack, a 
thing which had done more to mitigate the 
womanless solitude at the Edge of Things 
than any other event. If Papin had really 
known her well, it is not unlikely that Dilling 
would have had some motive for pushing on, 
but the subject was one which Papin had ex- 
hausted long since. So the pony was allowed 
to straggle at will, and it was midnight when 
the ranch was reached. 

Lights shone from the windows of Papin’s 
rooms. 

“He sits late,” said the wanderer. “He 
sits as late as I do. Perhaps for the same 
reason. He sits late to converse with shad- 
ows — with shadows!” He shuddered a little 
and dropped wearily from his pony. As he 
walked toward the door, he involuntarily 
glanced in through the window. Papin was 
not alone. A young man sat with him. The 
two were in earnest conversation. The cigars 
in their fingers had gone out. Dilling turned 
away sullenly. 

“Papin is very well entertained,” he said. 
“He hasn’t the least need of me. It serves 
me right for coming. I’ll kick that fool Lung 
some day. ’ ’ But Bet announced her arrival 

So 





“BY ALL THAT’S MYSTERIOUS; IF HERE ISN’T HIS DOG NOW." 





In Pursuit of the Chimera 


vociferously, and Papin threw open the 
door. 

“By all that’s mysterious, ” Brown heard 
him cry, “if here isn’t his dog now!” 

Dilling slunk back from the window, and 
had an instinct to run. Something about the 
shape of the head of the other man who sat 
within the room filled him with such a frantic 
longing, such a torment of memory of glad 
and foolish days, that he felt he could not 
speak to any one. But Bet led the party of 
investigation, and Papin discovered Brown 
skulking, and dragged him in to the light, 
where he stood blinking and looking away 
from the other men, like a child overcome 
with shyness. Papin and his companion, 
however, were using their eyes with purpose, 
and what they saw was a creature with hag- 
gard eyes and a drawn face. About him 
hung his soaking clothes, and his hair was 
long on his neck, faded to something lighter 
than hay color by the sun of the desert. 

“My soul!” half-whispered Papin. 
“You’re not a ghost, are you, Brown?” 

The man whom Brown had seen through 
the window had gone deadly pale. The 
clustering black curls stood damp upon his 

81 


The Edge of Things 


forehead. His comely face was twitching 
with nervousness. Brown laughed rather 
foolishly in reply to Papin’s question, and the 
guest came forward and put his arms about 
Brown’s shoulders, and looked him in the 
face. Then he hugged him very hard, and 
Brown trembled. His eyes closed. A few 
drops of saliva trickled from his mouth. 

“Is he going to faint?” whispered the 
guest to Papin. 

The ranchman got some brandy and poured 
it down Brown’s throat. Then Dil found 
speech. 

“I knew it was you all the time, Tommy,” 
he said. “I knew it was you, you darned 
dude!” 

He sank beside the table and buried his 
face in his arms. Tom Letlow dropped be- 
side him, threw an arm over his heaving 
shoulders, and waited. Papin lit a cigar, 
picked up his tattered Shakespeare, and also 
waited. After a time Brown looked up. 

“Don’t lay it up against me,” he pleaded. 
“I know I’m an ass, but I’ve just emerged 
from — ” 

There was a very long silence. 

“Well, from what, Dil?” 

82 


In Pursuit of the Chimera 


“From — I can hardly tell you what — from 
a place peopled with shadows who talked. 
I was afraid of you at first, because I could 
not tell whether you were one of the shadows 
or not.” 

“Close call,” muttered Papin. Letlow 
gritted his teeth. Papin went to the quarters 
to. send a man to look after the horse, and 
Letlow took Brown into his chamber for dry 
clothing. Half an hour later, the three men 
sat down together more calmly in Papin’s 
comfortable sitting-room. Brown looked 
about him with a smile of incredulity, some- 
thing like that a man might wear who had 
just got accustomed to purgatorial flames, 
when he opened his eyes to behold paradise. 
Brown said something of the sort. 

“I was getting used to it, you know, 
Tommy — getting used to the Robinson Crusoe 
business, and to having a sore-eyed wether 
for my especial confidant. And now I sup- 
pose I’ll be all upset again. But you will 
stay with me a little while, Tommy? You’ll 
do that much for — for the advancement of the 
race, so to speak.” His old trick of raillery 
returned at the mere sight of Letlow, and 
with each light-hearted word that he spoke 

83 


The Edge of Things 


something tight and terrible within .his brain 
seemed to loosen into comfort. 

“No, I won’t,” replied Letlow, emphati- 
cally. “I don’t want to know any more than 
I do about what you’ve gone through, old 
man. I’ve come to take you away with me. ’ ’ 

“O, I can’t leave, Tommy; the sheep — ” 

“Damn the sheep! Tell your men to 
divide the spoils any way they please. Are 
you much in arrears?” 

“Not at all, really; only for wages since 
last shearing, as is customary.” 

“Then let the men divide the spoils, as I 
said.” 

“I’ve told him the — situation, Mr. Brown. 
I hope you don’t think it a liberty,” Papin 
interposed. 

Brown smiled, and the smile had a hint of 
the glory of other days, when the general 
gorgeousness of that smile was celebrated in 
a class song at college. 

“Mr. Papin is so good a friend,” he said, 
“that he can say anything he pleases about 
me. He once did me a tremendous service 
and never knew it. Pretty much all the hap- 
piness I have had since I left home has been 
connected with the service he did for me. ’ ’ 

84 


In Pursuit of the Chimera 


‘‘What are you talking about?” cried the 
man with the tattered Shakespeare. His 
amazement was unfeigned. 

‘‘I said he didn’t know,” explained Brown. 
‘‘O, Tommy, Tommy, what a wonder to see 
you! And your plans — what are they?” 

‘‘To get you away from here.” 

‘‘But furthermore?” 

‘‘Well, as to myself, I’ve got a mission 
from my paper to go up to the Klondike. I 
may say I’ve caught on very well, Dil. They 
like me all right, and I like the work. I’ve 
done some things out of the usual, and it’s 
attracted attention. Excuse this infantile 
candor, but there’s no one else to tell you, so 
I must; for of course I insist on your finding 
it out. I’ve contracted to go up to the 
Klondike, and after that I have a roving com- 
mission for an illustrated weekly, and I’m to 
go and see anything I like and tell what I 
think about it. Likewise, I am to take pic- 
tures of it ” 

Brown’s face spoke silent congratulations. 

‘‘Then I have an anchor to windward. 
At least that may not be the right metaphor, 
and upon reflection, I don’t think it is.” He 
colored distinctly. 


85 


The Edge of Things 


“Call it a sweetheart, and let it go at 
that,” suggested Papin. 

“All right,” assented Letlow, “why not? 
Call it a sweetheart, for argument’s sake.” 

“It’s Anice Comstock!” cried Brown, his 
intuitions sharpened by his sufferings. “She’s 
a dear girl, Tommy. I’ve thought of her a 
good deal at times, and of how her pretty 
summer gowns used to rustle about the tennis- 
court, and of how sensible she was.” 

“O, we didn’t half know her that sum- 
mer, Dil! She was shy and not used to such 
fools as we were. So we couldn’t bring out 
the best in her. But she’s a lovely woman 
if ever there was one. And she’s anxious 
about you, too, Dil, and so is Miss Pilsbury. ” 

“That is kind of them.” 

“You don’t seem interested,” Letlow 
said, smiling. 

“I am very truly grateful, Tommy.” He 
thought of the bulky letter in his pocket, 
which he did not mean to send — which he 
never could send — and smiled. 

“This may be a good time to tell you that 
within the last ninety days it has transpired 
that Aunt Betty was a richer woman than she 
knew herself to be. A lot of land to which 


86 


In Pursuit of the Chimera 


she attached no importance has come to have 
a value. It’s wanted for summer hotels and 
cottages, and such iniquity. I have the pro- 
posals with me. That’s a big part of my 
business here. You can close all that up, go 
back to the old house, revel in its refinement, 
and marry any girl you please — when you get 
your hair cut. ’ ’ 

Brown sat and half-drowsed over this sug- 
gestion. His eyes were narrowed like those 
of one accustomed to turning thought and 
speech within. 

“I’ll go if Mr. Papin will go with me,” 
he declared at last. 

But the ranchman shook his head. “I 
have become wedded to my solitude,” he 
said. “And I couldn’t play tennis!” He 
looked so foreign to this occupation that the 
young men shouted with merriment. 

Then Letlow went on. “I stopped in San 
Francisco on the way down, and fixed it up 
with a man there about the Klondike. He 
told me a volume. He’s acquainted with the 
country — he’s been over the Skaguay once 
himself. He has a store at Juneau, and takes 
the supplies up there in his own vessel. Now 
he’s put a house up for his family, and he’s 

87 


The Edge of Things 


taking his wife and niece with him this trip. 
I’ve arranged conditionally for you, too, Dil. ” 

“I don’t know that I have the appetite for 
adventure that I used to have, ’ ’ said Brown, 
sadly. The Klondike did not appeal to him. 
He had a vision of a solitude as complete as 
that of the sun-baked desert, and more un- 
kind. But then neither did the idea of return- 
ing to the East and the dull, formal old town 
appeal to him. He regarded his state of 
mind with disgust. He appeared to be inert. 
4 ‘I wonder if my springs are all broken,” he 
thought, “and if I shall never go again.” 

“If it was for. good and all,” broke in 
Letlow, “I shouldn’t care about the Klondike 
myself. But it’s an experience, merely. 
After I’m through with that I may go to 
Hawaii. Things are looking up for us over 
there, you know. O I’m out to see things 
now, Dil, and incidentally I want to find a 
way to make a fortune if I can. And I think 
I can. I can almost smell my ship a-coming 
in.” 

He sniffed the air expectantly. “Then 
I’ll send back for Anice — or go back for 
her.” 

“She’s a dear girl,” admitted Brown, still 

88 


In Pursuit of the Chimera 


unenthusiastically. “ I congratulate you, 
Tommy. How did you ever tame yourself 
sufficiently to win the approval of such a 
modest, honest, starchy, altogether desirable 
sort of girl? Everything will go just right 
when you have married her. Your life will 
run in oiled grooves forevermore.” 

Letlow took a photograph out of his pocket 
and laid it on the table. “Look, ” he said, 
with pride. 

Dilling beheld the goodly face of Anice 
Comstock. “My powers,” he cried, “what 
a little lady! What a civilized, Christian crea- 
ture! I had forgotten that a woman could 
look like that. You are fortunate, Tommy!” 

Papin came and looked over Brown’s shoul- 
der, and he sighed, and then swore softly — 
almost tenderly — under his breath. 

“That’s what we miss,” said he. 

“Doesn’t that make you want to see Miss 
Pilsbury, Dil? She is sincerely concerned 
about you. You’ve known her always, and 
you have liked each other. Once she thought 
you weren’t serious enough — ” 

“Ah! She’d have changed her mind if 
she could have seen me lately. But no, 
Tommy, it doesn’t make me want to see her, 

89 


The Edge of Things 


because — ” He did not finish the sentence, 
but left it raw-edged. 

Papin suddenly strode to the table and 
pounded it with his fist. “Brown,” he ex- 
claimed, “you look as if you had a secret! 
You haven’t got a sweetheart out there in the 
wilderness, have you? My heaven, Brown, if 
you’ve found a woman out there, you’re — ” 
Papin stopped because his guest did not laugh 
at all. On the contrary, he grew solemn. 
“I beg your pardon, Brown. I have said 
something stupid? ’ ’ 

“No, indeed — something perspicacious. 
I haven’t found a woman out there, Mr. 
Papin, but — but I have found the soul of a 
woman. ’ ’ 

The men stared and were uncomfortable. 
Men do not like confidences as a general thing. 

The rain beat down harder than ever, and 
they could hear it pouring off the roof; but in 
spite of that, there was a lightening in the 
Far East. The dawn was coming over the 
desert. No one encouraged Dilling, but he 
had made up his mind to go on. He drew 
the great folio from his pocket, and slowly 
unwrapped the silken oilcloth which envel- 
oped it. 


90 


In Pursuit of the Chimera 


“I was afraid it would mildew,” he ex- 
plained.: 

“The soul of the woman, Dil?” 

“No; the letter I wrote to the woman. I 
discovered traces of her out there in the soli- 
tude, in the silence, Tommy — prehistoric 
traces, you may" say. It has been the study 
of these which has kept my soul alive. It 
has been what I learned from her that has 
made it possible for me to endure what I have. 
Mr. Papin understands. I said, didn’t I, 
that Mr. Papin had once done me a great 
service? It is true. The service was inesti- 
mable. He told me her name.” 

He pointed to the inscription on the out- 
side of the package. Letlow stooped to read, 
and Papin peered over his shoulder. 

“Katherine Cusack,” half-whispered Let- 
low, his eyes growing big, “Kath — why, man 
of many marvels, that’s the name of Captain 
Cusack’s niece! That’s the girl who is going 
to Alaska on the same boat with us! ' That’s 
the — the — ” 

“O, you’re fooling, Tommy! Please 
don’t.” Brown spoke like a teased boy. 

“Fooling? I’m not such a donkey. It’s 
she, I tell you. The captain said she needed 

91 


The Edge of Things 


a change, that she had recently buried her 
brother, and — ” 

“Oh, the poor devil is dead! Papin, you 
hear that? The bleating wretch is gone.” 

“Yes, he’s dead. His sister stayed with 
him till the last. Captain Cusack told me all 
about it. Then I came on, hot-footed, for 
you. ’ ’ 

“But I say, Tommy, it can’t be, you 
know. There’s some mistake. ” 

“No mistake, Dil. We’ll close up your 
affairs here — ” 

“O that’s easy. One of my men will 
take things off my hands for me. He’s very 
trustworthy. I’ll let them run things till I 
come back, share and share alike — Li Lung 
included. He’s a good heathen. He told 
me to come over here to-night. I’ll go back 
and pack.” 

He was thinking of the work-basket and 
the little glove, the clay jugs and the folding 
mirror. He would need them for an argu- 
ment. 

“And then it’s the Klondike, Tommy! 
My uncle, there’s the smell of adventure in 
it! What route shall you take, the Dyea, 
the Chilcat? — but that doesn’t matter. Of 


92 


In Pursuit of the Chimera 


course I may not go over the pass with you, 
eh? I may go into business in — in Juneau. 
As you say, ’ ’ though indeed the bewildered 
Letlow had said nothing of the sort, “it 
would be no place for me back in the old 
town. Not without Aunt Betty. Why, I 
couldn’t keep that boxwood trimmed — now 
could I, Tommy? It’s adventure I need. 
The Klondike’s just the thing. As for the 
East, it can get along without me very well, 
can’t it, Papin?” 

“Very well indeed,” said Papin, who 
knew. 


93 



The Home-Madness 


















The Home-Madness 


Louis Papin laid his thumbed Shakespeare 
on the table, after many ineffectual attempts 
to read it, and said aloud, in a speculative tone 
of voice, “Perhaps I’d better try a game of 
solitaire. ’ ’ 

He spread the cards out before him with 
much care; but the game proceeded slowly, 
for the reason that he seemed to have diffi- 
culty in recognizing the value of a card, star- 
ing at a three-spot or a knave of clubs with 
uncomprehending eyes, as if he had never 
seen the like before. All of which meant, of 
course, that the enterprising impresario of the 
Esmeralda ranch had something on his mind. 

Something was, indeed, so imperatively 
upon his mind that, after fifteen minutes of 
uncomprehending devotion to his game, he 
gathered up his cards, and putting them in 
their case, began to pace the floor of his 
room. He had, no doubt, plenty of troubles 
of a personal sort, if he had had the time to 
think about them. But his perplexity on this 

97 


The Edge of Things 


night was of another kind. The truth was, 
he stood face to face with the most vexatious 
problem which had confronted him since he 
first came down from San Francisco to look 
after eight thousand merinos for Leonard and 
Filbin. One year there had been an epidemic 
of acute tonsillitis, but he had nursed the men 
through that so successfully that not one grave 
on the wind-ravaged desert told the tale; 
another season the sheep had been stricken 
with influenza, but that was weathered with 
the loss of a few hundred head; and once, in 
the dead of the wet season — the season of 
black nights — a series of disastrous raids had 
been made by the Mexicans, in which nearly 
two thousand of the long-wooled sheep had 
been “cut out. ” 

Papin congratulated himself upon having 
met all of these difficulties with decision and 
a heart for the struggle. Neither he nor his 
men faltered till order and normality were 
restored. But it was a different matter now. 
A malady of more serious character than 
tonsillitis had broken out among the men. It 
was homesickness — endemic, contagious, 
malignant homesickness. 

Three of the men were down in bed from 

98 


The Home-Madness 


sheer sullenness, and there was hardly a man 
about the place who would vouchsafe an in- 
telligible and frank answer to a question. 
The home-madness was on them, and deeper 
each day grew their disgust for the desert, 
where the senseless sheep browsed and the 
rabid sun made its frantic course. 

It had come about naturally enough. The 
season had been unusually hot and dusty, and 
it seemed as if the sun grudged every hour 
which the night claimed for its own. The 
stars were well upon their way before the 
eyes of the herders could discover them, and 
the dawn was hustled, dry and breathless, 
over the mountains. They hardly caught a 
glimpse of her pale draperies before the day, 
swaggering and insolent, was there, holding 
her place with evil assurance. The quarters 
looked even more than usually uninviting. 
Lee Hang, the Chinaman, was an evil fellow, 
careless and ill-natured, and things got at 
their worst under his managem ent. It seemed 
as if the men breathed and ate dust; it was 
actually in their food; it was on their beds; 
they could not escape it; the sky appeared 
to be blurred with it. They began to see 
visions in the twilight hour — visions of trees 

99 


L.ofO. 


The Edge of Things 


beside running brooks, and dewy paths where 
women walked The desert was womanless, 
and thereby doubly a desert. All of these 
things Papin reviewed in his weary mind. 
He wished more than he could say that some 
perfectly sane and disinterested person would 
come along, to whom he might explain his 
perplexities. Perhaps he was a trifle anxious 
about his own poise. It had come to him 
once or twice that if there should be a hejira 
of the whole gang — the dogs would follow 
merrily — he, Papin, would have a good and 
legitimate excuse for ceasing to be factor of 
the dreariest ranch in southern California. 
But this thought, upon reflection, did not 
seem to be just the sort which Leonard and 
Filbin would expect their manager to entertain. 

He was granted his wish for a companion 
much sooner than could possibly have been 
expected. 

The next afternoon, just as the west was 
getting red, along came a white-covered 
wagon, driven by a coolie, and containing 
Mrs. Ambrose Herrick, wife of the manager 
for Stebbins of the ’Toinette ranch, with her 
baby and two maids. 

“I’ve been up in the mountains all sum- 


IOO 


The Home-Madness 


mer, Mr. Papin,” she explained, when she 
had been lifted out of her roomy vehicle. 
“Mr. Herrick said it wasn’t fit for the sheep 
down here in midsummer. But I’m worn out 
with sunrise excursions and horseback parties 
and hops. I made up my mind that if the 
rest of you could stand it down here, we 
could. Besides,” she added, somewhat anx- 
iously, “it’s the middle of September. Don’t 
you think Mr. Herrick will forgive me for 
surprising him by my return?” 

“I should think it would be an offense 
easy to overlook, ’ ’ answered Papin. 

“The first night we put up at Farns- 
worth’s Inn, but there was no hope for a roof 
over our heads to-night unless we reached the 
Esmeralda. I hope you are not going to be 
inconvenienced. We’ll put up with any sort 
of accommodation.” 

“Don’t you know you are conferring a 
favor, Mrs. Herrick? Lee Hang will be 
tickled to death at sight of your coolie; and 
the maids can have more admirers than they 
ever dreamed of, if they’ll only consent to talk 
with my lonely fellows. The sight of women 
will do us all good.” 

It was an enthusiastic welcome, as she had 

IOI 


The Edge of Things 


known that it would be. Papin made her 
pour the coffee at dinner, while he gave him- 
self up to the enjoyment of an evanescent 
sense of domesticity. 

“I wish I could commend your impulsive- 
ness, Mrs. Herrick,” he said. “ Herrick 
will certainly congratulate himself because of 
it. But the actual truth is that you have 
come back four weeks too soon You 
haven’t had a chance yet to learn what the 
Californian desert can do. Pity may sit in 
the heavens elsewhere, but not here. The 
world’s hidden batteries may hold swift cur- 
rents for others; for us they have nothing— 
not even the boon of swift destruction. ’ ’ 

And he told her of the madness that had 
come upon the men. 

“They are preposterous children, Mrs. 
Herrick. If they were down with the fever, 
I might see some hope ahead. But they’re 
in the dumps, and it’s dangerous.” 

“I suppose I am to take you seriously?” 

“Quite seriously, madam. I have told 
them my best stories, and had the pain of 
seeing them fall flat. I have essayed jokes — 
they might as well have been lamentations. 
I have played jigs on my violin, but I might 


102 


The Home-Madness 


better have devoted myself to funeral 
marches. ’ ’ 

The Chinese sweets had been served and 
eaten, and Mrs. Herrick’s host led the way 
out to the gallery. 

They seated themselves comfortably in 
low chairs, and Mrs. Herrick clasped her 
hands and watched the stars beginning to 
burn fervidly through the dust-laden atmos- 
phere. 

“Our stars have all turned red,” com- 
mented Papin; “and as for our sunsets, they 
are bloody.” 

“I’m afraid it was too soon to bring the 
baby back,” Mrs. Herrick said, anxiously. 

A penetrating and imperative cry broke 
the stillness. 

“There is the baby now!” She arose and 
ran to her chamber, returning with the little 
creature in her arms. 

“The maids are at dinner, so I thought I 
would bring him out here, Mr. Papin. I hope 
you don’t mind.” 

“A man who has seen only saddle-skinned 
herders with sun-bleached elf-locks for four 
months is not likely to object to this,” was 
Papin’s ardent reply. 

103 


The Edge of Things 


The baby was undressed and its flesh 
showed the tint of a half-opened wild rose. 
Its shy azure eyes contemplated Papin curi- 
ously, and it finally reached out a moist and 
clinging hand and inclosed one of the impre- 
sario’s fingers. It gave inarticulate, wild-bird 
cries; and when the moon showed a florid 
face above the horizon, it stretched out its 
arms in longing for this celestial toy. 

“The immemorial aspiration of babies,” 
said Papin, really very much amused at the 
offended manner in which the baby buried its 
face in its mother’s breast and wailed, when 
it found that the glorious object was not 
handed over to it. 

“Everything seems immemorial,” Mrs. 
Herrick said; “the desert most of all.” 

“I know what you mean,” responded 
Papin. “I have felt it. The herders — how 
ancient is their vocation! The sheep — they 
are of eld! I believe these are the same 
flocks that the holy shepherds tended; the 
same ones that Phyllis and Corydon piped 
to. And I, am I not the most ancient of 
all? I, the man who does nothing, who 
waits for some event within his own soul, 
knowing it will never come?” 

104 


The Home-Madness 


“I read Amiel’s Journal while I was up in 
the hills,” commented Mrs. Herrick. 

“Did you? I started to read it, but I 
feared I might be trying to extenuate myself 
by means of its logic. It will make me melan- 
choly if we talk of Amiel. See what a flush 
the moonlight has! No one could call this a 
silver light.” 

“No; it is red gold. ” 

A silence fell — a tribute to the beauty of 
the night. Then the baby grew restless, and 
Mrs. Herrick nuzzled it, and sent it to Ban- 
bury Cross and brought it back again. Some- 
how, all this gave a certain pang to Papin. 
It even embarrassed him. He ventured a 
suggestion. 

“Mrs. Herrick, I wonder if you would 
have the great goodness to take the baby to 
the quarters and show him to the men? You 
have no idea how they would appreciate it!” 

“If any poor creature wants to see the 
baby, he must not be denied. It is really 
pitiable to me to think of the number of per- 
sons in the world who have never seen the 
baby.” She arose, laughing and eager, and 
followed her host. 

Such of the herders as were not upon the 

105 


The Edge of Things 


night shift were sitting on benches without 
the house, looking off with unanticipatory 
eyes toward the arching sky, when Victoria 
Herrick went out to them in her fragrant 
white garments, carrying her half-naked baby 
in her arms. The glorifying radiance of the^ 
night lit up her young face, elate with its 
maternal joy, picked out the rounded white- 
ness of her arm, and glimmered through the 
drifting draperies of her gown. 

The men stared from her to the babe, and 
something clinked hard and dry in their throats. 
Louis Papin had made a mistake, and he real- 
ized it. Still, the scene must be gone through 
with somehow. 

“We are all a trifle awkward with babies, ” 
he said, addressing Mrs. Herrick, but speak- 
ing for the benefit of the men. “The only 
ones we see are at lambing time.” 

Mrs. Herrick’s clear and happy laugh rang 
out. 

“I like all kinds of babies, from pigs to 
monkeys,” she said. “I am sure I should 
like little lambs. But this kind of a baby is 
my choice!” And she snatched her little son 
close to her, fairly wreathing him about her 
neck, while the baby clutched at his mother’s 

106 


< 


The Home-Madness 

hair, and gave little shrieks, as penetrating as 
the cries of a young jay. Then, under cover 
of the little one’s happy clamor and the shy 
compliments of the men, Mrs. Herrick made 
good her retreat. 

“You should not have asked me to go out 
there!” she cried, reprovingly, when she was 
alone again with the impresario. “The baby 
quite upset them.” 

Louis Papin looked at the glowing and 
beautiful face of the young woman, and 
smiled. 

“The vision was too fair,” he admitted. 
“I might better have left them to a contem- 
plation of the desert.” 

When the serving-women had made all 
comfortable for the night, and the lady and 
her little one were sleeping, Louis Papin 
paced the earthen floor of the gallery, and 
indulged himself in a luxury of reminiscence, 
which, unfortunately, he could confide to none. 
The great lack in his life was a friend. As 
star dust may float in space, luminous and 
unformed, so the friendliness of this man 
failed to find any creature to whom it could 
attach itself. There had once been a man, 
not so long ago, out there at the Edge of 

107 


The Edge of Things 


Things, to whom Papin might have told many 
secrets, but somehow the chances slipped by; 
and just when he had reached the point where 
he might have unburdened his heart, the man 
had gone off toward the North, with exultant 
heart, following a beautiful phantom, and 
Papin saw him no more. 

To-night there came to him, with cruel 
tantalization, a vision of the home potential — 
the home to which he had not attained, and 
which, because of some inherent hesitancy of 
his nature, compacted of delicacy and melan- 
choly, he seemed never to be likely to achieve. 
As a convict in his cell dreams of joy, so this 
man, environed by the desert, who had sucked 
solitude into his soul, permitted himself for 
an hour to picture eagerly the comforts, the 
fine amenities, of a life about a hearthstone. 
He reproached himself for having been false 
to his generation. He blamed himself bitterly 
for what seemed, to-night, to be nothing bet- 
ter than criminal stupidity. He had turned 
his back, with silly cowardice, upon the beauty 
and fire of life, and secure, as he had thought, 
from all assaults of passion or ambition, had 
fixed himself here in the wilderness among 
these sullen men. Perhaps never in his ex- 

108 


The Home-Madness 


perience with them had he been so willing to 
apply unpleasant epithets as he was this night. 
For a fortnight he had seen them slouching 
about their tasks, cross to the dogs and brutal 
to the sheep. He had heard them using ugly 
words in the quarters. 

“We’re ripe for murder,” he thought. 
“We must have a diversion of some nature. 
If I were to break my leg, even, it would 
have a bracing effect. But it’s absurd to 
hope for the unexpected. It is the expected 
that always happens out here.” 

But for once he was unfair to the land of 
eternal heartbreak, for even while he com- 
plained a horse’s hoofs pounded the earth 
with a message of haste. 

Papin heard. He was glad to hear any- 
thing. He hastened to the gallery, and by 
the starlight he saw approaching a mounted 
figure in headlong haste, and heard a short 
barking cry — the danger signal of the Esmer- 
aldas. The factor sent back a cheerful shout. 
The unexpected was arriving — in the form of 
disaster, perhaps, but welcome nevertheless. 

“The Salita gang!” the man cried, as his 
horse plunged forward and was brought up on 
his haunches at the edge of the gallery. 

109 


The Edge of Things 


“They crept up by the arroyo and shot into 
the crowd. ” 

“Anybody hit?” 

“Dox.” 

“Not killed?” 

“I didn’t stay to see, sir. I saw a black 
crowd of fellows, and I lit out to git help. ’ ’ 

“Going to have a pitched battle, think?” 

“It’s on now.” 

Papin walked with a quick step to the outer 
door of the quarters. 

“Out, men! Out!” he cried, his voice 
trumpet-clear. “The Salita gang is making 
a raid! Billy Dox has been shot! Best 
hurry, or he’ll have company!” 

There was no excitement in Papin’s voice. 
Certainly vociferation would have been super- 
fluous. The men were on their feet before 
he had finished speaking. It does not take a 
herder of the sun-blistered desert long to make 
his toilet. His articles of clothing are not 
numerous, even when his catridge belt, his 
pistols, and his short rifle are counted in. 
Now the men dressed themselves with the 
rapidity of firemen, and ran shouting to the 
corral, where the saddles lay in a heap. They 
had no trouble, however, in finding their own 


no 


The Home-Madness 


— no more trouble than soldiers do to pick 
their muskets from a stack of arms. The 
ponies struggled up, snorting and curious; 
sniffed the air to make sure that it was not 
yet dawn; and then, smelling adventure, ner- 
vously submitted to the adjustment of the 
saddles and the rough haste of the men who 
mounted them. 

Papin did not stop to get out of his white 
linens, but put himself at the head of his men, 
armed like the rest, and with riding boots 
adding to the incongruity of his costume. 
The men fell into their places behind him, 
riding four abreast as was their habit, and 
the ponies, roweled to the feat, scurried over 
the plain like frightened rabbits. 

After fifteen minutes of this kind of riding 
the sound of firing reached their ears — a 
brisk fusillade. The men sent a shout ahead 
of them that scared the breathless desert, but 
which was intended to convey reassurance to 
their fighting comrades. A moment later the 
stars showed them bunches of sheep plunging 
aimlessly forward, and it was necessary to 
drive carefully to avoid trampling them. 

“Push ahead! Push ahead!” came Papin’s 
voice. The firing reached their ears spas- 


The Edge of Things 


modically, and each time the advancing herd- 
ers sent their wild cry of warning through the 
startled night. Then, a moment more, they 
were in the thick of the tumult. At first it 
was almost impossible to distinguish friend 
from foe. Then it became apparent that the 
Mexicans had ranged themselves so as to pro- 
tect a great body of the sheep which they had 
succeeded in detaching from the herd; but 
Papin led a flanking movement, and pressed 
down on them relentlessly. They made a 
feint of fighting, but gave way almost immedi- 
ately before the onslaught of avenging men 
and frantic horses, and were blown before the 
herders like flies before a wind. Papin 
laughed aloud at the flight, and then sent out 
warnings to his men, too headlong to note the 
arroyo, now not a hundred yards distant. 

“Steady! Steady!” came his voice, above 
the din. 

They halted on the verge of the rocky 
declivity. 

“They’re brilliant thieves, but rather dull 
fighters,” commented the factor. “They 
might have given us more of a party than 
this!” 

The men were rending the air with their 


The Home-Madness 


derisive calls, and curveting their horses in 
sheer excess of activity. 

“Who’s hurt?” called out Papin. 

“I got plunked in the arm,” sang Basil 
Watts, cheerfully. ’ 

“Richards,” said Papin, sharply, “why 
are you sitting limp like that? Why don’t 
you own you’re wounded?” 

“All I need is a screwdriver, sir. Some- 
thing seems a leetle loose about my right 
ribs.” 

“Ride home slowly, Richards. Some one 
go with him. Now, how about Dox?” 

A man rode to find out, and the herders, 
once more the swaggering guardians of the 
desert, sent out their long, wild sheep-cry: 

“Coo-ee! Coo-ee! Coo-ee!” 

The beat of a myriad little hoofs was 
heard. The sheep began to answer to the 
homing call, and came running together ex- 
citedly, still full of vague alarms. Seeing 
this, the call of the men became steadier and 
more reassuring. Papin gave orders that the 
trampled sheep should be carried to a desig- 
nated spot, watered, and left till morning, 
when the experienced surgery of the men 
might benefit some of them. Nobody wanted 

113 


The Edge of Things 


to go home. The wind of the dawn began 
singing afar off in the east, and the pink and 
yellow clouds that danced about the horizon 
appeared as a procession of Aurora’s servitors. 

It was decided finally not to return to the 
ranch for breakfast. No man had a notion 
for an indoor meal. Some one was dispatched 
for the wagons, and a fire made on the ground 
ready for the coffee when it appeared in the 
guardianship of the smiling Chinese, who 
brought word incidentally that Mrs. Herrick 
had a sufficient guard in her coolie, and would 
set out upon her journey without delay. 

“Dey lun, dose Salita lascals?” queried 
Lee Hang. 

“Run!” responded Papin. “They ran 
so, my friend, that if they had had pigtails 
like yours they would have all been whipped 
off.” 

The smoke of the fire flirted up through 
the golden air. The strange voices of the 
waste whispered along the ground. Then 
the fragrant scent of the coffee reached the 
nostrils of the hungry men, and Lee Hang 
began tossing griddle-cakes in the air. The 
horses, staked at a little distance, called out 
their congratulations to their masters in tremu- 


The Home-Madness 


lous whinnies, and the sheep kept up a so- 
ciable bleating. The men were full of noise, 
and told stock jokes, at which everybody 
roared. 

“They’d even laugh at one of my jokes 
this morning,” thought Papin. 

The man who had been sent to inquire 
about the wounded herder’ returned with word 

la.. 

that Dox wanted coffee. A great shout went 
up. 

“What’s the matter with Billy Dox?” they 
inquired of the scurrying coyote who appeared 
above the edge of the arroyo. Then, as he 
vouchsafed no answer to this vociferous in- 
quiry, they supplied the antiphon, “He’s all 
right ! ’ ’ 

He was, in fact, lying in the shelter of a 
clump of bushes suffering from a rather seri- 
ous head wound. 

“Thank God the Mexicans are not better 
marksmen!” said Papin, devoutly. “We’re 
all alive; but the real question is, are we glad 
of it?” 

A chorus of yells greeted him. The 
homesickness was gone. The desert claimed 
its children again. The familiar scene ap- 
pealed to the men with eloquence. The arch 

ns 


The Edge of Things 


of the sky, the limitless space, the friendly 
beasts, the dauntless company, the comrade- 
ship, the liberty from man’s yea and nay — 
was this not better a thousand times than a 
life of rules between walls or along thronging 
streets, with women forever cluttering the 
world? 

“Lyon, ” said Papin, “where’s your music- 
box? Out of order?’’ 

Lyon was the singer among the Esme- 
raldas. 

He set his cup of coffee down between his 
knees, and as the dawn gilded the low sky 
behind the scrub of twisted oaks, he opened 
his mouth like one who utters a challenge to 
destiny, and cheered his messmates thus: 

“Sonny, there was seven cities a-builded on th’ plain; 

Coronado, he beheld ’em, so he said. 

But I’ve hunted high an’ low, under sun an’ in th’ rain, 

An’ them highfalutin’ cities, they is fled. 

I have ranged this blisterin’ desert for a pretty turn of 
years, 

I ken foller paths no mortal man ken see, 

But I’d ruther take my chances roundin’ up unbranded 
steers, 

Then a-verifyin’ statements of a giddy ole grandee.’’ 

To this there was added a chorus, ribald 
and strident: 


116 


The Home-Madness 


“He was talkin’ thro’ his hat, 

Don’t you see? 

O where could he have bin at, 

That grandee? 

Coo-ee! Coo-ee! Coo-ee!” 

The wild and melancholy sheep-call, uttered 
by fifty throats at once, heralded the scarlet 
face of the sun as it swung arrogantly upon 
the habitated desert — a desert which, upon 
that morning, found no man sad among all 
the tribe of the Esmeraldas. 


Wan Tsze-King 



Wan Tsze-King 

Three ships with princely cargoes lay in 
the harbor of San Francisco waiting for the 
morning tide; and meanwhile, it being still 
early in the evening, Wan Chang, importer 
and gentleman, was celebrating the departure 
of his vessels and also keeping the harvest 
festival with the rest of Chinatown. All in a 
lacquer of red and black were the walls of the 
banquet-hall, and the lights, glowing behind 
their colored glasses, could have been counted 
by the hundred, although all of them together 
made less glow than did the green eyes, the 
fiery nostrils, and flaming breath of the papier- 
machd dragon which leered down upon the 
guests from the end of the hall. 

“There is no victim prepared for you, my 
friend,” said Wan Chang, whimsically, ad- 
dressing himself to the dragon; and the guests, 
with much applause at the gigantic toy, shook 
their heads and cried, “No victim for you, 
O dragon!” 

“I am to have the happiness of presenting 


The Edge of Things 


my son to you, ’ ’ the host announced to the 
company. “He accompanied me on this my 
auspicious visit to America, and has been liv- 
ing at the house of his uncle. Although my 
son is still so young that I make a demand 
upon your courtesy by bringing him here to- 
night, yet I could not deny myself, knowing 
how great an honor it will be to him.” 

All the guests bowed profoundly. They 
considered it quite right that the boy who was 
to succeed to the interests that made his 
father one of the leading men of Hongkong 
and of Chinatown, San Francisco, should 
meet with the friends and correspondents of 
his father. 

“He has been feasting in the cabin of the 
Flying Fish with some youths,” said Wan 
Chang, by way of apology for his son’s delay. 
As a matter of fact, he was not sorry that 
Wan Tsze-king was to enter the hall after the 
last guest had arrived. He wished him to 
make a sensation with his graceful, proudly 
carried body and frank, intelligent eyes. 
Wan Chang was pleased, too, to remem- 
ber how fine was the embroidery on the 
blue silken trousers and the purple jacket. 
Also, that morning he had given the boy a 

122 




Wan Tsze-King 

ruby, set in yellow gold, to wear upon his 
finger. 

There were steps. Wan Chang went into 
the anteroom. “I myself will lead in my 
son,” he thought. 

But it was only the tutor of Wan Tsze- 
king who met him, his eyes starting from his 
head and his breath coming hard. 

Wan Chang caught the man roughly by 
the shoulder. 

“My son — ” 

“Oh, merciful! He is taken! Ten men 
— as we were entering the carriage at the 
wharf after the feast — Chinamen — they it 
was! He and I were alone. I cried out, 
and the sailors came, but they — they — the 
servants, the police, all are searching. But 
likewise, I came to tell you.” 

He sank on his knees, hiding his face. 
Wan Chang felt the ice steal about his heart 
and he hated the man at his feet. 

“My grandfather would have slain this 
varlet, ” he thought, “but I — am I not of a 
different age?” Aloud he said: “Drive to 
the headquarters of the police. Offer as 
large a reward as they advise. Have the 
goodness not to venture into my presence 

123 


The Edge of Things 


till my son is found,” The tutor fled, and 
Wan Chang, setting his face toward the ban- 
quet-hall, walked in slowly, with much rustling 
of his embroidered robes. 

“My son,” he said, “is delayed. Will 
you do me the honor to seat yourselves at my 
poor table?” 

Of soups and fishes, of curries and meats, 
of candied fruits and sugared flowers, of cakes 
and compounds, there were many courses; but 
as Wan Chang tasted the savors of spices and 
fruits, his eyes turned restlessly to the dragon 
with the breath of fire. 

“You insisted on your victim, my friend,” 
he reflected, with miserable jocoseness. 

After the feast was over, the haggard man 
drove wildly through the streets of Chinatown 
to the wharves, and with his servants and 
sailors, searched like one who has lost a jewel 
which was all his wealth. He crept into loath- 
some cellars, routed dim-eyed men out of 
their bunks in the opium-houses, stole from 
one underground chamber to another, and 
everywhere pressed aside swarms of curious 
human creatures. Through it all he bore 
an impassive face, and the deep-sunken 
eyes might have been of bronze, but when 

124 


Wan Tsze-King 

he was alone he cried, “My son! My 
son!” 

As for the ships with the princely cargoes, 
they sailed away with the tide, bound for the 
under side of the world. Wan Chang re- 
mained behind. For him there was no coun- 
try. There was only his son — who was lost. 

Lee Hang, cook for the Esmeralda Ranch, 
got leave to go to San Francisco to the har- 
vest festival. It was a long journey which 
he had to take — two days by wagon over the 
sun-blistered desert, two days across the 
mountains into the western valleys, and a day 
and a night by steam. 

Meanwhile Louis Papin put the herders at 
the task of cooking, and they made some 
famous experiments. There was a story 
going afterward of how Bud Hennessey sea- 
soned a rice pudding with pain-killer, mistak- 
ing it for vanilla, and how Sam Nelson’s coffee 
came out scrambled eggs as the result of too 
much ‘ ‘settling.” 

It was well along in the season, and the 
men were worn with the interminable monot- 
ony, and were well enough pleased at diver- 
sion, even though it came in the way of work. 

125 


The Edge of Things 


Still, they were more than willing that Lee 
Hang should return, and as the second week 
of his absence wore to a close, they fell into 
the way of watching the drab ribbon of a road 
with the eagerness of children awaiting the 
return of their mother. 

At last, one afternoon, as the sun bounded 
along the autumnal sky toward its place of 
rest — and an uncommonly dust-blurred and 
burning place of rest it appeared to be — 
the white top of the supply wagon hove in 
sight. 

4 ‘Lee Hang! Lee Hang!” shouted some 
one. The crew was at supper, eating raised 
biscuits streaked with saleratus, and rice 
which was underdone. A shout went up. 
The men — there were fifty of them — rushed 
out with greetings which startled the horses 
in their corral. 

The Chinaman sat half-doubled up on the 
front seat, grinning, as with one inert hand he 
guided the mules toward the adobe. He gave 
back no verbal answer. His grin sufficed for 
everything. He slid rather than jumped from 
his seat, and flicked the dust of the desert 
from his white garments. Just then Papin 
appeared. 


126 


Wan Tsze-King 


“Well, Lee Hang,” asked he, in his kindly 
fashion, “what’s the news?” 

Lee Hang bowed profoundly, all the time 
watching the manager out of the tail of his 
eye. 

“Me blung boy,” he said, in his oily 
voice. “He helpee me. Me pay him. He 
my boy. ’ ’ 

“A boy? Where is he?” 

The Chinaman went to the rear of the 
supply wagon and motioned, and a moment 
later a slender Mongolian youth stood among 
the herders. His height was almost as great 
as that of the manager, but it was easy to see 
that he was overgrown for his age. His fore- 
head was high and narrow, his nostrils and 
lips quivered slightly, and his eyes looked as 
if he had been weeping heavily. 

“Have you come out here to help Lee 
Hang?” asked Papin, by way of greeting. 
He held out his hand, as he always did to a 
new workman, but the youth drew back, 
trembling. 

“He greenee, ” explained Lee Hang. 
“He jus’ ober. He no spik Enklis.” 

“We shall have you two jabbering all day 
long, I suppose,” Papin sighed. “You really 

127 


The Edge of Things 


ought not to have brought such a young fel- 
low as that out here, Lee Hang. He’s sure 
to want to go back before the end of a week. ’ ’ 

4 ‘He stay all light,” the Chinaman re- 
plied, laconically. 

After supper Lee Hang set his assistant 
to unloading the supply wagon. The youth 
went about his task awkwardly and with sullen 
anger. He perspired amazingly and as the 
result of exertions which seemed insignificant 
to the herders, who sat about watching him. 

“He’s soft,” they commented; “but 
Lee Hang will break him in all right enough. ’ ’ 
They laughed with grim humor. The truth 
was, that in spite of their eagerness to have 
the Chinaman return, they did not like Lee 
Hang. Their interest had its seat solely in 
the stomach. 

Papin, pacing up and down the compound 
before the cactus garden, had an observant 
eye, too. 

“The boy appears to have the sulks, but 
really, it’s no wonder. He’s city-raised, no 
doubt, and depressed at being among stran- 
gers in a cracking adobe in this world of dust. 
I must watch my coolie to see that he doesn’t 
overwork him.” 


128 


Wan Tsze-King 


That night the manager, being besieged 
with his old enemy, sleeplessness, and wan- 
dering about his room, looked out of the win- 
dow, and by the moonlight, which turned the 
desert into a sea of silver, he saw the boy 
creep out of Lee Hang’s sleeping-tent. 

“What now?” wondered the manager. 
“Is the bird about to fly away?” It was 
nothing to him whether the boy went or 
stayed, but Papin had a mind to give a 
friendly warning against venturing out unpro- 
vided with food. The youth listened cautious- 
ly, then moved out into the radiance of the 
night. He looked toward the west as if try- 
ing to measure those dusty miles; then, fling- 
ing up his arms as if in silent despair, he sank 
upon the sand. 

“Shall I go out to him?” asked Papin of 
himself. “We have not a word between us 
which both can understand. Neither of us 
has knowledge of a letter which the other 
can read.” As he watched he saw the boy 
stretch himself at full length upon the sand, 
with his arms crossed, and his face turned up 
to the sky. 

“It’s an odd thing,” mused the manager, 
“but I think I never before had a man about 


129 


The Edge of Things 


me who would not rather sleep than enjoy the 
night. Somehow, that fellow doesn’t look 
like a cook’s boy to me. I wonder if I ought 
to go out and warn him that he’s running a 
risk to sleep under the rays of that moon? 
But an Oriental ought to know that. Besides, 
this may be only a part of the plan to escape. 
Who am I that I should prevent the flight of 
a free man from the tent of Lee Hang? I’ll 
just go to bed. ” 

The next morning at five o’clock the cook’s 
gong aroused the sleepers, and Louis Papin, 
for whom this gong was not a summons, turned 
on his bed and remembered the cook’s 
assistant. 

“I wonder if he’s made off,” he said to 
himself. After dressing, he looked about for 
the cook’s boy, more than half expecting not 
to see him. But there he was, serving the 
breakfasting men awkwardly. He glanced 
up, met Papin’s eye, and flushed deeply, re- 
turning the manager’s bow with embarrass- 
ment. 

“Lee Hang,” said the manager, “what is 
the name of your boy?” 

“He? O he ain’t got much name. He 
jus’ Sam. Nice name, Sam.” 

13° 


Wan Tsze-King 


“I think I’d like Sam to wait on me.” 

Lee made a deprecatory gesture. .“Sam 
my boy, Mislee Papin. I mus’ hab Sam.” 

“0 very well, Lee Hang,” Papin said, 
and strolled out about the compound. He 
chanced to be near the well when the cook’s 
boy came out for water, and surprised him 
with the tears raining down his face. Papin 
walked up and faced him, looking straight into 
his eyes. Then he laid his hand on his breast 
and said, “My name is Louis Papin. What 
is your name?” Eye and tone made the 
question unmistakable. 

“Wan Tsze-king, ” the boy answered, 
sadly, and his supple hands, outspread before 
him, appeared to add, “at your service.” 

As Papin walked away musing, he saw the 
slanting eyes of Lee Hang peering around the 
corner of the cook-house. 

Three hours later the manager, driving 
back unexpectedly from the grazing-grounds, 
heard the voice of Lee Hang rasping through 
the lazy air in angry screechings. Entering 
his office undiscovered, Papin looked through 
the curtain of the window which commanded 
the cook-house. The cook was venting his 
spleen upon his assistant, who stood listening 

131 


The Edge of Things 


contemptuously, and who, at some word 
which the cook spoke, tore off his work-apron 
and dashed it on the floor. With a snarl, 
Lee Hang seized a short whip from the wall 
and advanced toward the boy, who, with an 
involuntary exclamation of horror, leaped 
aside and snatched a sharp, thin-bladed knife 
from the table. 

“I think Lee Hang is about to go to his 
fathers,” reflected Papin, “and I suppose 
I ought — ” But he paused in his thought, 
for the youth had turned the knife upon him- 
self, and would have used it desperately had 
not Lee Hang flung away his whip and 
groveled before the youth, imploring him not 
to use it. 

“That’s mighty curious!” said Papin 
aloud. “Why should it be worth as much as 
that to Lee Hang to keep the boy alive?” 

The youth, with a gesture of impatience, 
tossed the knife harmlessly at the cringing Lee 
Hang, and going out, threw himself upon the 
ground in the shade of the adobe, and gave 
way to a boyish passion of tears. 

The next day Papin summoned the cook’s 
boy to his office for an experiment. When 
“Sam” entered the room, Papin rose, bowed, 


13 2 


Wan Tsze-King 


and motioned the boy to a seat. The lad 
started and a flush came to his brow. He 
looked at Papin with an indefinable in- 
quiry. 

Papin smiled as if to say: “I understand. 
We are of a class, you and I, although pre- 
vented by circumstances from communicating 
with each other freely. ’ ’ 

Again he motioned to a seat. The youth 
made a graceful gesture of protest, and re- 
fused to be seated before the elder man had 
resumed his chair. Papin reflected that the 
world was made up of diverting trifles — even 
in the desert. By the quality of his deport- 
ment for that single moment, the cook’s boy 
had separated himself from the cook by a 
space as great as that separating the eagle 
from the chicken-hawk. 

Papin filled two glasses with cooled fruit 
juice and extended one to the lad, who ac- 
cepted it gracefully, and with hope springing 
to his soft eyes. 

After that Papin was not of a mind to 
leave the boy at the mercy of the cook; and 
that night, when the quarters were darkened 
and the night-shift was on duty five miles dis- 
tant, he prepared a number of telegraphic 

i33 


The Edge of Things 


messages designed to cover all imaginable 
contingencies. 

“I'll send those straight from the grazing- 
ground by Bud Hennessey in the morning,” 
said Papin, “and the oily beggar in the 
kitchen will be none the wiser.” 

He picked up his tattered Shakespeare — 
this was the ladder which enabled him to look 
over the wall of silence which surrounded him. 
There came a soft knock at the door. With 
a swift premonition of who was without, Papin 
darkened the light that the rays might tell no 
tales through the opened door. 

“Is it you, Wan Tsze-king?” There 
came an answering word. Papin made way 
for the lad to slip in, turned up the light, and 
had the pleasure of beholding Wan Tsze-king 
in his true estate. The boy’s face glowed, 
the spring of youth had come back to his 
body. He ran to the table, drawing a roll 
from his blouse, and spread out a series of 
simple but striking pencil sketches. Papin 
gave one glance, gathered their purport, and 
indulged in a congratulatory slap on the lad’s 
shoulders. 

The blunt point of a soft pencil told in 
graphic lines the full tale of Wan Tsze-king’ s 

134 


Wan Tsze-King 


journey to America, his pleasures, and his 
adventures. The concluding touches por- 
. trayed the scene on the dark wharf when he 
had been taken from his tutor; the long stairs 
leading to the underground den' where he had 
been hidden by his captors ; the journey in a 
small boat; the long drive through the coun- 
try in the charge of three Chinamen; the rail- 
way journey under the same charge; and last 
of all, the drive with Lee Hang in the supply 
wagon. But in the picture Lee Hang was 
not the grinning cook, but a hard-featured 
man with a revolver laid across his knees, 
and sidelong glance fixed on his captive. 

“We are getting very sensational at the 
Esmeralda, ’ ’ thought Papin, and he drew mar- 
ginal sketches on the pictures representing 
coins falling from a full bag. Wan Tsze-king 
clapped his hands and nodded. He knew, 
clearly enough, that he was being held for a 
ransom. 

Papin, who was facing the door by which 
Wan Tsze-king had entered, was wondering 
stupidly why it was that, there being no wind, 
the door should be slowly opening. Then, 
sharply, realization came to him. He put his 
hand at his hip pocket and leaped before his 

ns 


The Edge of Things 


young guest. He had expected to face Lee 
Hang. He faced him and two other men — 
strangers — of Lee Hang’s race. 

Papin chuckled a little in a way he always 
had when in danger. 

“Louis Papin, ” he grumbled to himself, 
“don’t you know any better than to be mur- 
dered by slant-eyed heathen like these?’’ 
Still laughing he walked toward them. He 
would have given much for words by which 
to indicate to the boy that it was time to make 
good his escape, but he dared not take his 
eyes from the men who entered. 

“Lee Hang,’’ he said, jestingly, “you 
haven’t introduced your friends.’’ 

Lee Hang was transformed. The grin 
was gone; the obsequiousness had vanished. 
The others Papin knew for the men of W an 
Tsze-king’s sketches. The cook seemed to 
be bunching himself together like a cougar 
about to spring, and Papin was drawing his 
revolver, when in a breath, the light was out 
and they were in perfect blackness. 

The revolver went off in Papin’s hand, and 
then, fancying that his assailants would expect 
a retreat on his part, he made a rush past 
them and ran squarely into the grasp of a 

136 



HE PUT HIS HAND TO HIS HIP AND SPRANG BEFORE HIS YOUNG GUEST. 




Wan Tsze-King 


trained wrestler, whose chief desire appeared 
to be to strangle him. 

Papin was not in the best of training, but 
he bent his energies to keeping his antagonist 
in action. 

“In that way I’ll avoid a knife-thrust from 
the others, ’ ’ he thought. 

So the dull noise of their pushing and 
plunging filled all the place. Save for that 
there was silence, and Papin began to feel a 
cold anxiety about his ally. 

“Have they made off with the boy?” he 
wondered. 

The Chinaman had bent the manager’s 
head back till it almost touched his spine, and 
Papin was guessing how long a man was 
likely to live after his spine was broken, 
when, down through the length of the adobe 
there came a noise of rushing feet, and the 
sharp, barking cry of the Esmeraldas! A 
moment later there were lights, and the herd- 
ers. Papin felt himself lifted in the air. 
His antagonist was throwing him — by way of 
a farewell. 

“When I fall it’ll be all over with one in- 
consequent fool!” he reflected with lightning- 
quick self-pity. But he was mistaken. He 

H7 


The Edge of Things 


was caught in stout arms — the arms of Bud 
Hennessey, who laid him down carefully and 
undid his shirt. As the purple blood stilled 
itself gradually in the swelling arteries, Papin 
heard wild cries from the darkness outside. 

a> 

He wanted to say that the Chinamen were 
not to be killed — it was not always possible to 
tell what the Esmeraldas would do when they 
got a chance to break the monotony of their 
lives — but no words came to his dry throat. 

Some one lifted his head and held water to 
his lips. It was Wan Tsze-king, pale, with 
tears in his eyes. Papin drank and felt better. 
He sat up. Wan Tsze-king laid one boyish 
cheek against the manager’s hand, and then 
he softly kissed the hem of Papin’s old coat. 
The manager shook him off as one does a too 
affectionate kitten; then, with quick remorse 
at his act, he took the boy in his arms. He 
realized that they had both escaped from great 
peril. 

The men made a fearful howling outside, 
and the manager was starting to the door to 
see what they were doing. He hoped they 
were not tearing the creatures limb from limb, 
but he couldn’t be quite sure. But just then 
they came in, dragging two human bundles, 

138 


Wan Tsze-King 


which proved to be the two strangers, tied as 
safe as good cattlemen were capable of tying 
them. 

“How did the brutes get here?” inquired 
Papin. 

“They rode. The horses are outside, sir 
— or one of them is. Lee Hang has just 
made off on the other one. ’ ’ 

“Is no one following?” 

“Twenty are following. They have 
lassos. ” 

“Ah!” said Papin, as if dismissing the 
subject. “Well, to-morrow these fellows 
must be dumped in the supply wagon and 
taken to town. Lee Hang shall drive them — 
and Bud Hennessey shall see that he drives 
straight. Or perhaps, Bud, you’d rather stay 
behind and cook the biscuit?” The men 
guffawed. 

“Here’re the boys, sir! They’ve got 
him!” 

They had him sure enough — Lee Hang — 
weeping, cursing through chattering teeth! 
He tried to kneel to the manager, and he 
blurted out an explanation of his temptations, 
of how he was a poor man and the son of a 
poor man, and these wicked ones had offered 

139 


The Edge of Things 


him a great reward for concealing the boy, 
till the boy’s father, who was rich beyond 
riches, should pay the half of his fortune for 
his son’s return. Such a reward had been 
offered, and they, the wicked ones, had driven 
by day and by night to secure the boy and 
take him with them to his father’s house. 
Then they had forced him, Lee Hang, who 
was most miserable, to attack his protector. 
For which he prayed that he might suffer the 
shame of them that forgot their father! 

‘Pah!” said Papin. ‘‘Take him to the 
wash-room and get the blood off the rat.” 
He looked once more at the creature, trying 
to summon some pity or generosity. ‘ ‘ I hate 
rats!” he said, and turned to Wan Tsze- 
king. 

‘‘This boy has wept long enough in cap- 
tivity,” he said, in his own voice again. 
‘‘So he and I will ride beside the wagon to- 
morrow, and when the men there are given 
up to the authorities, we will go on to San 
Francisco. Kindly have some one put that 
sofa in my bedroom, will you? Wan Tsze- 
king and I will end the night as we began it 
— together. ” He put his arm about the lad’s 
shoulders to draw him from the room. 


140 


Wan Tsze-King 


“As for you — you fellows, you’ve stuck to 
me in the old way. I’ll remember — ’’ 

But at the first word of thanks — and the 
manager’s voice had a quiver of emotion in it 
which he could not keep down — the herders 
bolted out of the door as if Louis Papin had 
the plague. 

But upon consideration — if he had had the 
plague, they would not have bolted! 

Two days by wagon over the sun-blistered 
desert, two days across the Western valleys, 
and a day and a night by steam. When he 
reached a house with three black balconies, 
Wan Tsze-king ran ahead of Papin and 
pounded on the door. A servant opened to 
him. Papin heard cries; he saw his friend 
surrounded. A dozen were chattering. Then 
down through the dim, scented hall came a 
man, stumbling along, his arms outstretched 
toward the lad. Papin chuckled. He was 
glad he was not dead — he had been glad of 
it for a whole fortnight. 

A week later, when Papin would have no 
more feastings, no more exhibitions of wrest- 
ling and of jugglery, no more gifts of jade and 
ivory, of silk and crepe, he said good by to 

i 4 i 


The Edge of Things 

Wan Tsze-king in the porch under the black 
balcony. 

As he walked away, his heart was full. 
“Even an Oriental can have a son,” said 
he, “but I— I—” 

The streets of Chinatown, the fluttering 
bazaars, were swallowed up in a vision of the 
drab road to the Esmeralda ranch, down 
which he should presently be urging his horse. 


142 


Time’s Fool 









J 





Time’s Fool 


The sheep herders of the Californian waste 
have not much to say in an autobiographical 
way. Their reminiscences are liable to be 
impersonal — or fictional. They jest and curse, 
swing and swagger, lie and laugh, fight on 
provocation, and keep shamefacedly within 
their hearts those sentiments and emotions 
which are the mainsprings of their loyalty and 
their courage. It is only by this loyalty and 
this courage that a stranger may discover that 
sentiment exists among them at all. 

It therefore surprised no one that Reg 
Westover “kept a close mouth”; but it was 
generally agreed that if he had a mind to tell 
his tale it would be worth the listener’s while, 
for there was an incongruity between him 
and his surroundings which amounted to mys- 
tery. Slouch as he would in his soiled khaki, 
letting hair and beard grow long and ragged, 
neglecting his whole person with an obvious 
scorn for it, he could not hide certain tricks 
of movement and address which seemed to 


i45 


The Edge of Things 


speak a knowledge of crowd and pavements; 
and the patois of the herders sat awkwardly 
upon his tongue. He used it extravagantly, 
and now and then with inaccuracy. 

Louis Papin made a point of talking with 
him one day soon after his arrival, hoping to 
find some one there, in that desperate soli- 
tude, who could talk of the Further World — 
the world beyond the cactus and the stunted 
pihon, the sun-dried arroyos and the dusty 
waste — but Westover had answered with such 
ill humor and slovenly indifference that the 
factor turned away in disgust and went back 
to his serene if melancholy loneliness. Papin 
had the code of an upright heathen, and to 
leave each man to the living of his own life 
was one of the articles of this code; so West- 
over was dismissed from his thoughts till a 
disagreeable incident brought him once more 
to mind. 

It was Saturday night, and the men, hav- 
ing “cleaned up,” were gathered for a 
“party.” Sometimes, if it was not too hot, 
they danced at these festivities; sometimes 
they sang or told tales, and on this particular 
Saturday night it was agreed that stories were 
to be told. They started out with tales of 

146 


Time’s Fool 


adventure, which were none the less interest- 
ing because they were impossible. But little 
by little the quality of these narratives lowered 
till they became the scurvy leavings of the 
imagination — that putrid debris of the soul 
which men rake up in evil moments. 

Not far from the men’s veranda, hidden 
by the night, sat the factor, engaged with his 
new toy, a two-inch telescope, which he was 
focusing on a tangle of jeweled stars. He 
could not help overhearing these sorry 
tales. 

“Pah!” he muttered, under his breath. 
“Shall I tell them to hold their unclean 
tongues or shall I move out of earshot?” 

He was about to do the latter when he 
heard Reg Westover’s voice. He was mak- 
ing his addition to this obscene lore in an 
anecdote so blasphemous and scortatory that 
Papin held his breath in horrified curiosity. 
Nor was the tale told in an ordinary manner. 
In this lamentable competition it was meant 
to cap the climax of the impious. It seemed 
to be dragged up out of hell and to accommo- 
date itself but ill to the upper air. 

Papin presented an austere face before the 
men. 


H7 


The Edge of Things 


“Westover, ” he commanded, “come 
here.” 

“What d’yeh want?” The manner was 
the perfection of insolence. 

“You!” 

The man arose with insulting nonchalance 
and went out. Papin led the way to the tele- 
scope, looked through it, withdrew his eye, 
and motioned imperatively to his companion. 

“Look through that glass,” he said. 
There was a sullen accession to this demand. 

“You see those stars?” 

“Yes.” 

“Two of them are blue. Do you notice 
that? One is yellow, and one is red. An- 
other is a sort of green. You see that, don’t 
you?” 

“I guess that hits ’em off.” 

“You can’t understand it, can you? You 
can’t even make out the force that keeps 
them where they are, I suppose. ’ ’ 

The man turned from the instrument and 
looked at the factor with mingled curiosity 
and disgust. 

“Well, in the presence of things like that, 
which I could never understand, and which 
mean some sort of a power beyond our high- 

148 


Time’s Fool 


est thought, I wouldn’t dare do what you did 
just now, Westover! I — I wouldn’t be so 
ungrateful as to — as to blaspheme.” 

There was a silence, but the insolent 
smile was still on the man’s face. Papin 
resumed: 

“I’ve always made a point of not interfer- 
ing with you men — made too much of a point 
of it, very likely. I haven’t been doing my 
level best myself, and I didn’t feel in a posi- 
tion to criticise other men. But to-night — 
well, I wondered if I hadn’t some responsibil- 
ity in the matter of the conversation I over- 
heard a few minutes ago, Westover?” 

The man’s sullenness was intensified, if 
anything. Papin saw him clench his hands, 
as if he would like to put a violent end to the 
humiliation he was undergoing. 

“0 1 hate the preaching just as much as 
you do, Westover. Preaching isn’t in my 
line. I’ve a notion, too, that blaspheming 
isn’t in yours — eh? It didn’t seem to come 
naturally, some way. The other men were vile 
enough, but they were unthinking. With you 
— well, you thought , man. I heard the defi- 
ance in your voice. Now, why should you feel 
defiant?” 


149 


The Edge of Things 


The man turned away with an ugly shrug 
of the shoulders. 

‘‘Wait,” said Papin, with a change of 
tone. “Wait a moment if you please, West- 
over. I saw you look in the telescope like a 
man accustomed to it. Now, I’m quite a 
novice. I got the glass for company, you 
see. I haven’t the advantage of as much 
society as you men in the quarters.” 

The man straightened himself with a sud- 
den, half-resentful gesture which Papin 
noticed. 

“So I feel my way slowly,” Papin went 
on, indicating the glass. “I think I have my 
glass trained on the Scorpion. Can you tell 
me?” 

Westover went to the telescope and looked 
through it again. He swung it a little, and 
then swung it back again. 

“Those stars lie north of the Scorpion, I 
think. Antares is above — see, that red star. 
This group is Grassia. ” His heavy manner 
had quite disappeared. His very intonation 
was different. 

“I see.” Papin lifted a hand to his mus- 
tache. “What college, Westover?” 

“University of Pennsylvania.” 

150 


Time’s Fool 


The factor took out two cigars, handed 
one to his companion, and slowly lit the other. 

‘'Man, what damnable nonsense brought 
you here to chase merinos in a desert?” 

Westover was lighting his cigar and did 
not reply for a moment. Then he said: “I 
wouldn’t ask that of you, Mr. Papin.” 

‘‘No, I suppose not. I beg your pardon. 
It was interest, man, not curiosity. Your 
thoughts are your thoughts, God help you! 
And mine — my thoughts are my thoughts, 
Westover. Well, make the best, not the 
worst of your situation. Come talk with me 
sometimes — when it rains. I can get on very 
well nights like this, but when the rainy sea- 
son comes on I’m turned in upon myself. 
You haven’t been through a winter of it yet, 
but you’ll find the evenings dire. They’ve 
turned my hair white. ’ ’ 

‘‘Thank you,” said the other, somewhat 
resentfully, ‘‘but I think I’ll stay where I 
belong — with the men. If I had wanted to 
stay with my own kind, I’d have stayed there, 
you know. If I have my reasons, I prefer to 
keep them to myself. I’m not worrying other 
folks — in fact, I’m not worrying myself very 
much.” 


The Edge of Things 


A weak and almost boyish bravado was 
apparent in the tone. 

“I’m sorry, Westover. If you change 
your mind — ” 

“I sha’n’t change my mind,” said the 
other, roughly. “And I’ll be obliged to you 
if you will avoid letting the men know that 
I’m not just the sort of a brute they thought 
me. You won’t tell — ” 

“Westover!” 

* ‘ I beg your pardon, sir. Good night. ’ ’ 

“Good night.” 


152 


The Descent of Westover. 


The Descent of Westover 


For a month Papin saw little of Westover. 
The two men avoided each other — an easy 
enough thing to do, for there is a social bar- 
rier between the employed and the employer, 
even in the desert. But Billy Dox came one 
day to say that Westover had been in his bunk 
for a week and over with a bad cough. 

“He ought to hev took to his bed long afore 
he did,” said Dox. “And the hull truth is, 
the boys think they see his finish.” 

“Well?” 

“Consumption. He wasn’t much physi- 
cally when he come out, and the dust played 
dido with him. You know how it is, sir, this 
here climate agrees with you or it don’t. 
When it don’t it hustles you into your grave 
so fast you can’t count the telegraph poles as 
you go by. ’ ’ 

Papin went straight to the quarters and 
looked the sick man over with the skill of one 
who knows something about most things and 
a good deal about a few. 

i55 


The Edge of Things 


“It’s a phthisis,” he said, shortly, hiding 
his sympathy. “ You’d better let me send 
you home. ’ ’ 

”0 I’m a scotched snake, sir, I know 
that, but you needn’t worry about sending me 
home, because I haven’t one.” 

“No home?” 

“What’s the difference! Of course if you 
don’t want me to die on your hands, I can 
crawl off somewhere.” 

“I don’t see that you’ve any call to insult 
me,” said the factor, sternly. “You haven’t 
long to stay, so why not be agreeable?” The 
herder saw that he had tried the other’s 
patience a little too far. 

“Just asyou please, ’ ’ he said, more amiably. 

“Let me send for your wife.” 

“How do you know I have a wife?” 

“You look married, somehow.” 

Westover gave a short, hard laugh. 

“If it’s just the same to you,” he said, 
“I guess we won’t send for my wife.” 

“Is there any one else, then, you’d like to 
see?” 

“No, Mr. Papin, there isn’t. I came out 
here not to be seen, and I want to be put 
away without any fuss. ’ ’ 

156 


The Descent of Westover 


“I’m thinking about myself as well as 
you,” said Papin, severely. “Is there any 
one who may blame me for not sending?” 

“No one will know whether I’m under the 
ground or above it, and that’s the truth. I’m 
buried already, and now I’m reversing things 
by dying. I always did things topsy-turvy. ’ ’ 

“Your mother — ” 

“She’s dead. O let’s drop the subject! 
Bury me under that monkey-cactus out there 
— the sooner the better, and forget all about 
it — as I shall. However, there’s this — you 
might send my — you might let my sister 
know, after it’s all over.” 

“The address?” 

“Miss Evangeline Westover, Philadel- 
phia. ’ ’ 

Papin wrote down the street and number, 
and that noon while he ate his dinner, he 
arranged with Billy Dox to carry a message 
to the nearest telegraph station, which was a 
day and a half to the west, riding as a man 
rides who goes on an errand of speed. 

Then he turned a small adobe storehouse 
into a hospital, dropped canvas curtains at the 
window, and rigged up a sort of punkah, which 
the boys took turns in swinging. Westover 

i57 


The Edge of Things 


was put in there, and Li Lung, a Chinaman 
for whom Papin had more than a passing re- 
gard, who had been put in the kitchen for old 
association’s sake after Lee Hang, that thief 
of a heathen, had been cast forth for an at- 
tempt on the factor’s life, proved his excel- 
lence by the attention he gave the invalid. 
Once or twice every day Papin managed to 
drop in for a talk, and the two fell into the 
way of talking about matters that lay close to 
their imagination — talked of travel, and people 
back east, and college and books and busi- 
ness. Little by little Westover’s sullenness 
disappeared. He was often querulous, with 
the fretfulness of a child, and he sulked if 
Papin was late in making his visits. He 
came, in fact, to depend upon the impresario, 
partly because of his suffering, but partly, 
too, because of an inherent weakness, not of 
body, but of soul. 

“Well,” said he one day, as Papin was 
engaged in ministering to his comfort, “in a 
week or two more I won’t even have the privi- 
lege of being cross. ’ ’ 

“O, I expect to be rowed by you a good 
deal longer than that,” Papin answered, 
cheerily. 


158 


The Descent of Westover 


“ ‘There is no work, nor device, nor 
knowledge, nor wisdom in the grave whither 
thou goest, ’ ” quoted the sick man. 

“I didn’t know you quoted scripture,” 
smiled Papin. 

“Why not? I used to learn fifty verses a 
Sunday — I and my sister. We looked down 
on any one who couldn’t do that.” 

“Well, I’m sorry not to agree with the 
Wise Man,” said the factor; “I mean in re- 
gard to the absence of wisdom in the grave. 
There’s so little wisdom this side the grave 
that I’m convinced there must be some 
beyond. ’ ’ 

“I’ll soon know,” said the other. He 
made an attempt to speak lightly. 

“My soul, Westover, what a monster I 
am!” groaned Papin. “If you were going 
on a journey over the mountains, I’d fix you 
out carefully, wouldn’t I? I’d look after your 
water-bottles and your grub-sack, and see to 
your saddle and your blankets. But here you 
are, starting out on a journey so long that no 
man knows the end of it, and I’m not doing 
a thing to help you get ready. But I don’t 
know how, you see. I’ve always had an 
uppish pride. ‘Nature,’ I have said, ‘shall 

i59 


The Edge of Things 


suffice for me. I was born, I shall live, I 
shall die, and in living and in dying I shall 
|ake things as they come and ask no questions. ’ 
Well, that’s the way I settled it for myself. 
But now here you are, dying in your youth, 
with your teeth on edge, so to speak, and as 
I’m a man, I don’t know a thing to say to 
you!” 

The sick man smiled wanly. 

“ Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ve had 
preaching enough done to me — if that’s what 
you mean.” 

“Preaching? I don’t know that that is 
what I mean. I want to fill your grub-sack 
and your water-bottles. I want to give you a 
new saddle.” 

“Give me a stirrup-cup and let it go at 
that,” said the other, almost gayly. “You 
see, Mr. Papin, I probably know a great deal 
more than you do about the promises given to 
the faithful. I was dodgasted good when I 
was — when I was a boy, and Evangeline and 
I lived with Aunt Belinda Phipps. We had 
prayers morning and evening; we lived in the 
fear of the Lord all the day long. Every- 
thing was regulated for us. But somehow it 
didn’t suit either of us. Evangeline was a 

160 


The Descent of Westover 


good deal like me. She liked to do the thing 
no one expected her to do. But she played 
in better luck than I did.” 

That occasional distaste for the man which 
Papin felt, assailed him now. He noted the 
weak chin, the timid eyes, the indications of 
incertitude of purpose. 

“I shall probably like his sister even less 
than I do him,” he reflected, and thought 
with a bachelor’s irritation of the way every- 
thing would be put about by the presence of 
a woman in the house. 

“I ought to write up to Mrs. Herrick,” 
he decided, mentally, “and ask her if she 
can’t come down and stay while my expected 
guest is here.” 

Virginia Herrick was at home now with 
her husband and son on the neighboring ranch 
— and she was a marvel of wifely and young- 
motherly sacrifice and devotion, according to 
Papin’s verdict. 

“But perhaps she will not be the sort of a 
person I ought to ask Mrs. Herrick to stay 
with,” he concluded. Westover had been 
going on garrulously about his old home life, 
but the words carried little meaning to the 
factor. There was a distinct note of com- 

161 


The Edge of Things 


plaint in the sick man’s voice. He seemed 
to be finding fault with destiny in general, 
and with several persons in particular. At 
length Papin came back from his mental wan- 
derings, and inclined an inert ear to these 
vaporings. 

“It was at college,” Westover was say- 
ing, “that I met the girl I married. I didn’t 
finish my university course. I thought I had 
to marry her right off-hand, so I went into 
business. I had a little money, and I in- 
vested it in a bindery. I owned a third of 
the business, and I did two-thirds of the work. 
My wife was ambitious for a home of her own, 
so we built a house, and had a mortgage and 
a garden and all manner of luxuries. After 
a time three little daughters came to us — first 
one, and two years later, twins.” 

“Well, you seem to have had your share 
of good fortune,” said Papin, rather 
sharply. 

‘ ‘ I had my bad fortune, too — as much bad 
as good, even then. We couldn’t make 
both ends meet. The children wore em- 
broidered dresses and I had to go without my 
down-town lunch. The lamps were never 
ready to be lighted when night came, and 

162 


The Descent of Westover 


dinner was never cooked on time. My wife 
said we couldn’t afford help, and that she got 
the meals as soon as she could. She said she 
was worn out working, and that she never had 
clothes to go anywhere. I couldn’t make it 
out. Other men’s wives got along on the 
same amount or less. She always seemed to 
have perfumery and lace parasols, but she’d 
go without good shoes or cloaks. Everything 
was at sixes and sevens. I ought to have 
been able to get some sense into her, but I 
didn’t know how to go about it. If I said 
anything she cried, and she would get up in 
the night and pray aloud over by the chil- 
dren’s cots. The next morning she’d be sick 
in bed and I’d have to get breakfast. She 
used to say the source of all our evils was our 
poverty, and I thought perhaps she was right. 
That was the beginning of our disaster. ’ ’ 

“I can understand,” murmured Papin, 
sympathetic in spite of his disgust at the man’s 
tone. 

“The accounts of the firm were in my 
charge. I — O what’s the use of going on? 
I’m a fugitive from justice, Mr. Papin.” 

“You can escape everything here except 
memory,” said the impresario, slowly. “I 

163 


The Edge of Things 

know, for I’ve tried. What became of your 
wife?” 

“She asked prayers for me at church,” he 
said, dryly; “then she went back to her 
father in western New York. I turned my 
face the other way. I went on a sheep ranch 
in Colorado and stuck it out there for nine 
months. Then I got to dreaming of the chil- 
dren. ’ ’ The sick man dragged himself nearer 
the edge of the cot, and Papin checked an 
impulse to move away from him. “I 
couldn’t shake the thing off. I heard their 
voices whenever I was alone; I used to dream 
they were hanging on me and jumping about 
me, and then I’d wake up and hear the wind 
whistling down the gorge back of the house, 
and find myself in that crawling bunk in the 
shack. I thought I was losing my senses. 
Anyway, I knew I had to get out. I knew I 
had to see those girls of mine. I made my 
way on freight cars or tramped it all the way 
from Colorado to Utica, New York; I was 
almost a month getting there. It was raining 
the evening I reached town. I splashed up 
through the street to the house where my wife 
was. It was an old-fashioned place with a 
big bedroom opening off the parlor, and I — I 

164 


The Descent of Westover 


stood outside and heard the voices of the — I 
heard the voices of my little girls in there, 
Mr. Papin.” 

He paused for a moment, breathing hard. 
Then he resumed: 

“ Their mother was undressing them for 
bed. I stood on a stone and looked in, and 
I saw their three curly yellow heads, and their 
feet peeping out from below their night- 
gowns. It was too much for me. I had to 
lie down in the grass a while to keep from 
falling. I lay there and let the rain beat in 
my face. Then, after a time, I went to the 
front door and rang the bell. My wife an- 
swered it!” 

“Yes,” said Papin, very gently. 

“I was in rags and unshaved and starved. 
My eyes were deep in my head, and my hands 
cut up with hard work. You can imagine 
how I looked. But I was fool enough to 
think she would pity me. Oh, I can’t go on!” 

He buried his face in his thin arm and lay 
there quivering with a shameful remembrance. 

“You were not allowed to see the children 
at all?” Papin inquired, softly. Westover 
shook his head. 

“Her words were flails,” he said. “They 

l6 5 


The Edge of Things 


were flails. They beat the life out of me. I 
felt myself crumbling away, it seemed to me. 
In the morning I found myself lying in a 
barn, but I don’t remember how I got there.” 
“Did you try again?” 

“No. I was beaten. I got a job with a 
shovel and I worked on the street. The chil- 
dren passed me one day, and never so much 
as looked my way. I threw down my shovel 
then, and left. Since then I’ve been wander- 
ing. At last I came here, and I’ve liked it. 
I seemed to be at the end. ’ ’ 

“ ‘The Edge of Things,’ a friend of mine 
used to call it.” 

“And about day after to-morrow I’ll be 
over the Edge. After that I sha’n’t want 
anything — not even to see my girls. ’ ’ 

Papin began to mutter a verse: 

“ ‘Ah, make the most of what we yet may spend, 

Before we, too, into the dust descend; 

Dust into dust, and under dust, to lie, 

Sans Wine, sans Song, sans Singer, and sans End.’ ” 

“Dust!” cried the sick man, with sudden 
querulousness, “there’ll be dust enough out 
yonder, Mr. Papin, God knows.” 

The impresario made no reply. He 
looked out of the window at the interminable 


The Descent of Westover 


desert, and the dust seemed creeping upon 
him before his time — aye, piling upon him, 
and he forced his thoughts to turn otherward. 

“We’re all poor devils, Westover,” he 
concluded, pensively, and he brought a drink 
of fresh water for the sick man, and then 
went out to walk among the cactus. 


167 


A Woman Intervenes 



A Woman Intervenes 


There came a certain tender day to the 
desert. There was a reminder of freshness 
in the air, as if the wind in its long journey 
had somewhere swept across a sea. A few 
clouds broke the relentless blue of the sky, 
and the dry grass flushed into something 
almost like verdure. The men and horses 
moved with alacrity, and the sick man aroused 
himself sufficiently to complain about his 
breakfast, which complimented poor Li Lung, 
whose cooking had been meeting with the 
most sodden indifference. 

“It sets me to thinking of the creek I used 
to live in most of the time when I was a boy 
— this day does,” said Westover, musingly. 
“It seems as if I could hear water gurgling. 
Evangeline and I used to go around bare- 
footed all summer. I remember how she 
used to laugh when she made a cloud of wrig- 
glers scatter as she rushed through the creek, 
and how she used to feed the turtles.” 

He sighed and laid back on his pillow. 

I 7 I 


The Edge of Things 


This was a reminder of the things that 
were to be — of the woman that was to come. 
Papin almost shivered. The thought was 
certainly disagreeable. A timidity and an 
aversion united to make him dislike the idea 
of being under the roof with this woman. 
Would she be as selfish, as complaining, as 
dull in her moral sense as her brother? There 
was a great deal of Westover — a great deal 
of manner and magnetism. He could not be 
ignored. It was necessary to have a definite 
opinion about him — like or dislike. In the 
midst of his reflections, his eyes wandered 
eastward, from whence the wagon bearing his 
dreaded guest would come, and there, behold, 
in the light of day, was the wagon, almost 
upon him! Papin seized his field-glass and 
adjusted it with nervous fingers. 

“There she is,” he muttered, in a panic. 
“There she is, sitting beside Dox!” 

He ran to the kitchen and told Li Lung — 
who met his excitement with imperturbable 
calm. Then he plunged to the “guest-cham- 
ber” — a dusty cell, furnished with an iron 
bed, a deal table stained red, a mirror, and 
two chairs. 

‘ ‘ Get fresh linen on this bed, quick , 9 9 he 

172 


A Woman Intervenes 


shouted to Li Lung. “See how dusty this 

is, you rascal! Bring clean towels, too — an 
armful of ’em! O my soul!” Everything 
looked dust cursed and poverty cursed. He 
thought of Virginia Herrick’s cool, exquisitely 
kept rooms — Virginia Herrick, over at the 
’Toinette Ranch, who had made a heaven for 
one poor sheep factor, and a palace out of an 
adobe. It would never do to let Miss West- 
over stay there alone — he should have to write 
to Mrs. Herrick and beseech her to come to 
his rescue. But the inconvenience of the 
Esmeralda! Papin blushed at the thought of 

it. Even if Mrs. Herrick came, she would 
not be willing to subject the baby to the trial 
of being away from its own nursery. And 
of course she wouldn’t come without the baby! 

The wagon was almost at the door, and he 
was starting out, when he chanced to take a 
glance at his duck uniform. It was far from 
spotless! He ran to his room, and as he 
struggled with starched button-holes, heard 
Dox making his guest welcome out in the 
office. It was ten minutes before he could 
make his appearance. 

“She’ll be nosing around everything,’’ he 
thought, resentfully, thinking of some half- 

173 


The Edge of Things 


written verses he had left lying out on the 
desk, and of that pathetically thumbed Shakes- 
peare of his, which he could never bear to see 
in the hands of another. There was a letter 
from Dilling Brown, too — a letter not for 
other eyes. 

But when he first entered the room he did 
not see anyone there at all. He looked about 
him with a wild wonder as to whether she was 
on a tour of investigation about the premises. 
If so, what would she think of the heap of 
saddles and water-bottles and bridles and pots 
and boots and lassos and pails in the court? 
And there was Bud Hennessey’s tame copper- 
head running about! She would have hyster- 
ics the first thing. The perspiration started 
out on Papin’s brow. But at that moment a 
little figure arose out of Papin’s own steamer- 
chair — it was sitting facing the door and far 
from the desk with its treasures — and con- 
fronted him with anxious and timid eyes. 

Dust lay thick over the little brown travel- 
ing suit, and on the curls of the soft, brown 
hair; the little brown shoes showing beneath 
the short skirt were dusty, too; but "around 
the eyes were circles conspicuously clean. 

“She has been weeping,” thought Papin. 

174 


A Woman Intervenes 


“I forgot that she would be likely to weep.*' 
This anthropological study upon which he was 
entering seemed to be complex enough, good- 
ness knew! Well, anyway, she must be 
spoken to. He went forward, horribly con- 
scious of his stiff collar and the awful cleanli- 
ness of those white ducks. 

“Are you Mr. Papin?” said a quiet voice. 
“I can see that you are! How good of you 
to send for me — it was the greatest favor you 
could have done me, truly.” 

Papin, shaking her hand — the slimness of 
which visibly disconcerted him — was making 
some confused disclaimer to kindness, but she 
interrupted him with a direct question. 

“How is my brother? Is he — ” 

“Come, refresh yourself, and I will go to 
prepare him — ” began Papin, trying to avoid 
her eyes. But she interrupted him. 

“He is very weak?” 

“Yes, but—” 

“He is doomed? There is no hope?” 

Papin straightened himself and drew his 
breath in sharply between his teeth. He 
wished he were anywhere else — under fire of 
the Mexican bandits, in the thick of the rainy 
season, worrying over plague-stricken sheep 

i75 


The Edge of Things 

— anywhere, anyhow, but this where and 
how. 

“There is really no hope, ” he said, clearly. 
“If you had come two days later, I fear — ” 

“I see. Thank you, Mr. Papin. This is 
the way to my room? And will you be good 
enough to have my luggage sent in?” 

Papin — who knew how to obey — did as he 
was requested, and then he lit a cigar to 
steady his nerves. 

“She bears it like a Trojan,” he said; 
and he tried to comfort himself with the 
thought that he would be spared superfluous 
lamentations. It would have been so like a 
woman to have rent the heavens with lamenta- 
tions for a man who had never been able to 
make honest use of the life that was given to 
him. Papin paced the floor for twenty min- 
utes. Then he wrote a note to Virginia 
Herrick and implored her aid. At the end 
of that time Miss Westover made her appear- 
ance. 

“I’ve just been writing to the lady on the 
adjoining ranch, Miss Westover, to ask her 
if she cannot come over here during your 
stay. We are many men here, and I fear — ” 

“O, if you do not mind, Mr. Papin, please 

176 


A Woman Intervenes 


do not send the note! I should have to divide 
my time, you see, if any lady came here. I’d 
have to do that in common gratitude. Just 
don’t mind my being here. Forget I’m a 
woman. I want to be free to do nothing but 
care for Reggie, you see. And — Oh, I’d have 
no heart to talk with any one! You won’t 
mind if I seem silent, will you? I haven’t 
known for years where my brother was. And 
now that I find him dying — you understand 
that I can’t be anything but — but concentrated 
on my trouble, don’t you? I hope you won’t 
think me ungrateful.” 

She said it quietly and swiftly, her words 
somewhat broken with her distress, but her 
meaning clear enough. 

Papin tore up the note to Mrs. Herrick, 
and held out his hand. 

“I understand entirely,” he said. “I’ll 
try to do as you wish — forget that you’re a 
woman, as you say, and help you through.” 

Some girls would have flushed, but Miss 
Westover did not. She sighed sharply, and 
said, “Now take me to my brother.” So 
Papin led the way and she followed, with a 
gentle whiffling of her blue lawn frock. An 
odor of violets made itself faintly perceptible, 

177 


The Edge of Things 


and the brown locks were braided in careful 
grace upon the small head. Papin had not 
made up his mind about her beauty. She 
looked fatigued, and her face was naturally 
small and her eyes large, so that, in spite of 
her bravery, she made an appeal to the sym- 
pathies. 

“Remember,” he said at the door, “that 
I haven’t prepared him.” 

He wondered then why he had not done it 
in the twenty minutes he spent pacing the 
floor What had he been thinking of? How- 
ever, it was too late now. He saw the girl 
straighten her shoulders, and then run almost 
gayly into the room. He heard her give a 
little laugh, and then call out something with 
an indescribable tenderness of voice. He 
heard Westover say: 

“It’s not you, Eva! Not you!” 

Then he sped back to his office, congratu- 
lating himself on having done at least one 
intelligent thing in the course of a blundering 
life. 


178 


What Papin Had to Tell 



What Papin Had to Tell 

Undoubtedly Papin’s task as host had been 
simplified for him. 

“She wants to be left alone,” he said, 
smilingly, to himself — or perhaps to Bud 
Hennessey’s tame copperhead — “and I cer- 
tainly ought to know how to oblige her. I’ve 
had practice enough in leaving people alone. ’ ’ 

But they met in the sick-room, and they 
took turns at the night-watch, and they stood 
side by side awaiting the coming of the 
“Intruder. ” 

It was longer coming than Papin expected. 
The dying man had a sudden accession of 
nervous force after his sister’s arrival. He 
took an acute interest in everything pertain- 
ing to life. He seemed to be clutching with 
both hands at the palpable, material evidences 
of existence. He wanted to talk, to sing, to 
walk, to eat, to laugh. 

Miss Westover’s courage was exaggerated 
to a sort of bravado to meet this demand. 
Papin heard her jest and laugh, and noticed 

i8i 


The Edge of Things 


that her cheeks flamed scarlet with the strain 
and her eyes were over-brilliant 

But she made no attempt to appear oblivi- 
ous to the approaching event. Papin heard 
her talking about it. 

“I shouldn’t think it would make any 
difference how far one had traveled away 
from home, dear,” he heard her saying, 
“one should be all the more glad to get back 
if one had gone a good way, you see. There 
wouldn’t be any doubt about the reception, 
once one walked within the door. ’ ’ 

Westover made no reply. Papin could 
see him lying on his cot, with his eyes 
straining off across the endless stretch of 
waste. 

“Aunt Belinda always believed in you, 
dear. I always believed in you. We knew 
your heart was aching, even when you were 
doing wrong. We knew you wanted to be 
good. When Aunt Belinda died she told me 
she thought you would come back to us some- 
time, and to your old belief in the goodness 
of God. It’s a desert — this agnosticism — a 
desert like that out there! There’s no com- 
fort in it. And then it isn’t respectful — this 
doubt. I don’t pretend to know anything, 

182 


What Papin Had to Tell 


Reggie, but I want to keep a respectful 
attitude toward my Creator. I can’t under- 
stand any of the things he’s done, or myself, 
or what is to be. But I can wait respectfully. 
Something may be revealed to me some 
time.” 

Papin sat up to listen! His own ideas, 
precisely, but told more frankly and sweetly 
than he had the courage to state them. He 
half-wheeled round in his chair to get a fuller 
glimpse of the girl. Then he saw that it cost 
her something, too, to speak of sacred mat- 
ters. There were tears of embarrassment in 
her eyes, and her hands were trembling as 
they played with the fan she held. He 
nodded approvingly. He liked a reticent 
person, and these signs showed him what 
a strong habit of reserve she must have 
broken. 

Sometimes, when her brother slept, she 
came out to take a little exercise, and Papin 
gave her Linda Lund, his strawberry mare, 
to ride. Papin could see that for all of her 
natural dread of the event she was to face, 
that she was not grieving profoundly. There 
seemed to be a pain back of the pain that 
reconciled her. He could understand that, 

183 


The Edge of Things 


too. The man had had an ill-spent life. 
This was making up the books — it was squar- 
ing things. She said as much one day. 

“It’s the best way,” she remarked, under 
her breath; “it’s the simplest way. As long 
as he lived he’d be tortured. He’d want the 
children and his wife and his old friends and 
the esteem he used to have. He couldn’t 
get any of them back. * ’ 

Westover had confessed to her that he had 
told his story to Papin. 

“He has one thing regained,” she went 
on; “he used to have a hope of immortal- 
ity, but he lost it. Now he hopes again. 
Perhaps he even believes. He is at peace, at 
any rate.” 

“This is a fine place to teach a man 
peace,” said Papin. 

“Yes,” replied the girl, “I know. 
Nothing seems worth while — except truth. 
Ever since I’ve been here I’ve been thinking 
how ridiculous the city will seem to me when 
I go back to it, with every one fuming and 
rushing and wanting things. ’ ’ 

“I suppose you fumed and rushed and 
wanted things as much as any one when you 
were there?” 


184 


What Papin Had to Tell 


“Yes. I was a little more bewildered 
than the rest, that is all.” 

“What did you do? How did you spend 
your days?” 

“After Aunt Belinda died I went into set- 
tlement work. There wasn’t very much I 
could do, but I had to live somewhere, so I 
got them to take me in at the Ann House.” 

Papin had heard of settlement work, but 
he had vague ideas about it. He immediately 
saw visions of Miss Westover caring for small- 
pox patients, or persuading burglars from 
their evil ways, or picking up foundlings from 
doorsteps. He looked at her with utter 
reverence. 

“Tell me what you did,” he said. 

Evangeline blushed brilliantly. “I — I 

danced — mostly. ’ ’ 

“Danced!” he dropped his cigar in his 
astonishment. 

“Yes; I always loved to dance. I have 
a knack for it. So that seemed the best 
thing for me to do at Ann House. I had a 
dancing class every evening, and the boys and 
girls came up there after work. It kept 
them from going to worse places, and it gave 
us all a great deal of pleasure. It was like 

185 


The Edge of Things 


watching a flower open out of an ugly sheath, 
to see how a sullen, awkward, over-worked 
Bohemian girl would brighten up after she 
learned the way of it. It was a fine room, 
and the music was sometimes tremendously 
good. Great artists used to play for us some- 
times. I was happy there — only I worried 
about Reggie. And there wasn’t any future, 
some way. ’ ’ 

Papin sat staring open-mouthed, trying to 
adjust his understanding to totally new things. 

“I don’t know that I was altogether cut 
out for community life,” Evangeline re- 
sumed. “I have the home instinct. Aunt 
Belinda always gave us such a very homey 
sort of a home. I want to be where I can 
smell the baking of my own bread, and read 
my own magazine by my own reading-lamp, 
and invite my own friends to my own table.” 

“You have an instinct for proprietorship,” 
responded Papin. 

“I suppose so. The settlement life was 
very exciting. There was always some event. 
I never seemed to have time to catch my 
breath. ’ ’ 

“Well, you’ve had time out here.” 

“I should think the years would cheat you, 

1 86 


What Papin Had to Tell 


here. They fairly sneak by. I never knew 
such quiet, unobtrusive things. I suppose 
you have got so that you don’t notice their 
coming and going at all.” 

“They do cheat me, that’s a fact!” cried 
Papin. “I’ve lived here year in and year 
out, looking at the dawn, watching the noon, 
staring at the sunset. I’ve ridden out among 
the sheep, overseen the lambing and shear- 
ing, slept, eaten, dreamed, and my youth has 
gone. My friends have forgotten me. I lost 
my grip of the world. I am Time’s fool. 
You’ve spoken the truth, Miss Westover. ” 
He leaned forward to look at her. The 
large eyes were regarding him sympathetically. 

“But I did not mean to make a personal 
remark,” she apologized. “I was thinking 
of the adroitness of time more than of the 
effect of its subtlety upon you. I was think- 
ing of the great similarity of the days. ’ ’ 

“Yes; but, however, thought has variety 
enough. A man can always change his mood, 
even if he has to keep the same company. I 
have had my diversions, even here. ’ ’ 

Miss Westover smiled gently, and let that 
wistful gaze of hers wander away where the 
high chaparral made a horizon line — but that 

187 


The Edge of Things 


had an inconclusive look, and did not deceive 
the eye, which held the fact of the desert still 
beyond. 

The waste was, however, at its best on 
this particular day. The sky wore its most 
mysterious and impenetrable blue. Depths 
upon depths of blueness tantalized the eye — 
mocked the spirit. Westward ran the road 
to the “Edge of Things,” where a friend of 
Papin’s once lived. Papin meant to tell Dill- 
ing Brown’s story to Miss Westover some 
time. A day ago he would have sworn that his 
story should never pass his lips, but now he 
resolved that she should know it. He wanted 
her to understand the best and the worst of 
the place. East by north straggled the road 
to the ’Toinette ranch, where the Herricks 
lived. Some day, too, he would tell her 
about Virginia Herrick, and how she gave up 
everything to live there in the desert with the 
man she loved. He blamed Herrick, himself. 
He thought to accept such a sacrifice was too 
excessive a demonstration of masculine selfish- 
ness. He concluded it might be a good story 
to tell her then and there, but the invalid 
stirred, and she hastened away to test the 
temperature of the water in the olla. 

1 88 


What Papin Had to Tell 


Papin watched her without offering to help. 
He watched her draw the water and see to the 
wrappings of the jug, and carry a drink in to 
her brother. 

“What a good boy you are,” he heard her 
saying, cheerfully. “You have slept till 
almost twilight. See, the worst of the sun 
is over. Did you ever see such a sky? Just 
fancy how the stars will look when they come 
out in it! I’ll go tell Li Lung you’re awake. 
He wanted to know the very minute. He 
says he has something simply gorgeous to give 
you. ’ ’ 

Still Papin did not help. He watched 
her tripping to the kitchen, and he noticed 
how airy light her step was, and with what a 
charming nonchalance she played with her 
little Japanese fan. 

“I suppose I shall never see her dance,” 
he reflected. “I shall only see her weep. 
It is my luck. ” 

The days passed unobtrusively. The 
delay of the death scene came to produce a 
sort of dull disappointment, like the delay of 
any other event. The restrained emotion 
wore upon the nerves, nibbling at the courage 
of Evangeline. But she made no complaint 

189 


The Edge of Things 


of fatigue, though she slept seldom and never 
gave vent to her grief. Louis Papin became 
accustomed to her quiet ways; to the neatness 
she produced in the establishment without 
appearing to assume an iota of responsibility. 
An atmosphere of refinement seemed to be 
diffusing itself, even over the office, where the 
shelves with their litter, the worn chairs, the 
round-faced clock, and the old typewriter 
acquired an hitherto unsuspected air of 
domesticity. Moreover, if the invalid chanced 
to be sleeping at dinner-time, then that meal 
took to itself the aspect of a function. What- 
ever Miss Westover’s distresses and appre- 
hensions, she did not permit herself to abuse 
these occasions. 

They sat together one evening — Bud Hen- 
nessey being on watch beside the sleeping sick 
man — and Miss Westover watched with kin- 
dling eyes the swift approach of the mounted 
herders. 

“The world is all empty, except for them, ” 
she said. “That is what impresses me all 
the time out here. You own the world. 
That is generally thought to be a very desir- 
able thing.” 

“But there are not enough things in our 

190 


What Papin Had to Tell 


world to make it as interesting as it might be. 
For one thing, we are defrauded of the pas- 
time of envying. We have no one here 
with whom to compare our state, so we can 
neither commiserate nor congratulate our- 
selves.” 

“Well, there’s one thing about it, you 
have your own way out here. ’ ’ 

“Well, hardly,” said the host, with a cer- 
tain bitterness of accent. “A great many 
things have happened since I came out to run 
the Esmeralda which were not at all according 
to my wishes. As, for instance, that poor 
boy in there — dying. He’s only just learned 
the lessons that would fit him for living. Oh, 
no man has his own way! If I could have 
my own way to-day, Miss Westover, do you 
know what I would do?” 

“I have not the least idea, Mr Papin.” 
“Well, I should come to life again. I 
should begin at the beginning. I should find 
out whether I amount to anything. Here I 
have been sitting on the fence, and the pro- 
cession has gone by. ’ ’ 

“You have not met the insurmountable 
obstacle,” said the girl, solemnly. “You 
have not died the final death. While the 


The Edge of Things 


brain thinks and the heart beats it is always 
possible to be interested in something. ’ ’ 

“My soul!” cried Papin, half-angrily, 
“do you mean that I ought to be interested 
in the merinos? You mean I ought to be 
satisfied with the herders?” 

Those who had known him for a languid 
philosopher, content with inertia, dreaming 
through the golden, idle days, would not have 
known the accent nor the attitude. 

He himself discovered that these lines did 
not belong in his role, as he had learned it in 
patience and self-contempt years ago. 

“I’m trying to get her to pity me, ” he 
thought, with disgust for himself. And he 
was, indeed, indulging in the immemorial 
secondary form of wooing. For the first is 
that of the adolescent swaggerer, who will 
arouse the admiration of his love; but the 
man whom the years have chastened endeav- 
ors to awaken the compassion of the woman 
he wishes to attract. The first says, “Be- 
hold what I am willing to suffer — for you!” 
The second, “Behold what I have suffered 
on the long road before I met — you! Com- 
fort me for love of Love.” 

So it came about that two nights later 

192 


What Papin Had to Tell 


Papin told his story — the story his friends had 
wondered over, which no man had ever heard 
from his lips. 

“I was twenty-two,” he said, commiserat- 
ingly. “Perhaps that is why I was so 
offended when fate frowned at me. At 
twenty-two one expects good treatment. I 
started out by believing implicitly in my 
future and in myself. I think I’ve told you 
that I grew up in Toronto. Well, when I 
started out for myself, I went the way of 
other and more famous voyagers down the 
road of waters to New Orleans. I met a girl 
there — an orphan, teaching the children at a 
house where I visited — and I — from the first 
minute I — I wanted her. I have often re- 
flected on that ecstasy of mine, and wondered 
if it could be possible that I, a sun-dried, 
weather-bleached factor of a God-forsaken 
sheep ranch could be the same glorified being 
who haunted that house. I asked her to go 
to my mother’s and stay, there till I could 
marry her. I told her we should be married 
in the church where I was christened, and 
that she should wear my mother’s wedding- 
veil. I wrote my brother to meet her at 
Chicago, and then, feeling her secure and 

193 


The Edge of Things 


protected, I plunged into work. I assure you 
my prospects were more promising than they 
are now. At last fortune was all but within 
my grasp, and I felt justified in going home 
for my bride. I remember what a fever I 
was in. Everything seemed unreal to me — 
except Lucie. O it was insanity! But 1 
had been consecrated to her, you understand. 
I had been trying to make even my thoughts 
worthy of her. Well, I reached Chicago — 
and there I found a message awaiting me.” 

He drew out a long, black purse and took 
from it a sheet of paper which almost fell 
apart at its foldings. 

“Do not imagine that I usually carry this 
around with me now. I took it out of my 
desk to-day and brought it here for you to 
read. ” 

Evangeline took it with some hesitation, 
and read it slowly 

“My dear Louis,” it read, “you asked 
me to take care of Lucie. I have done so, 
and now I find that I must care for her 
always. We love each other and are to be 
married to-day. There is no help for it. 
Perhaps we shall never be happy, but that 
makes no difference. We cannot part. 

194 


What Papin Had to Tell 


Believe that our treason will be forgiven by 
you before it will by ourselves. Come home. 
We shall be gone. Mother knows, and she 
wants you to come home.” 

Evangeline handed the note back. 

“Did you go home?” she asked. 

“I have never been home since.” 

Evangeline asked nothing, but her eyes 
confessed to an unsatisfied curiosity. 

Papin sat silent a moment, and then re- 
sumed his tale with a grim smile. 

“They went to Australia a few years ago 
—my brother and his — and Lucie. By the 
Devil’s own arrangement I chanced to be at 
San Francisco at that very time, and I met 
them on the wharf, face to face. ’ ’ 

“Oh!” cried the girl, sympathetically. 

“It was under the electric light. They 
saw me, and Lucie clutched at Philip’s arm. 
I lifted my hat and waited.” 

“And something banal happened, I know 
it did!” cried Evangeline. “I have noticed 
that in real life the moments we expect to be 
dramatic never are so!” 

“Yes — that was the way of it. Philip 
saw me and said, 'Is that you, Louis? I 
didn’t know you, you are so brown.’ ” 

i95 


The Edge of Things 


“Mr. Papin, is that really what happened?” 

“That’s what happened. Lucie was the 
next to speak. ‘We are on the point of sail- 
ing,’ she said. I had a nervous desire to 
laugh. In fact, I felt the impulse conquer- 
ing me. It seized me by the throat, and I 
literally ran away, but I knew my laughter 
floated back to them like smoke after a 
steamer. ’ ’ 

He looked at his companion, half shyly. 
The color was coming and going in her face, 
and her eyes looked larger than ever. 

“You’ve never heard from them since?” 

“Never. Nor have I ever spoken of it 
since — it has seemed too grotesque. Don’t 
think I’ve told the tale for the sake of gossip- 
ping about it. I wanted you to know my 
tragedy, so I’ve spread it out before you like 
a map, with all its depressions and elevations. 
I thought it was something terrific — some- 
thing like the death valley over beyond us. 
But you see it is commonplace enough. ’ ’ 

Evangeline sat silent for a time. Then 
she arose with a gesture as if to brush the 
miserable tale away. 

“So that’s what you’ve had to think about 
here all these years!” she said, with aversion 

196 



“THERE ARE BETTER THINGS TO THINK OF,” SHE SAID 


What Papin Had to Tell 


for the fact. She had started to leave the 
room, but she turned suddenly and came 
back. 

4 ‘There are better things to think of,” she 
half whispered. 

Papin would have given worlds if the light 
had not been so dim. He could not make 
out_ the expression of her face, nor penetrate 
the meaning of her words. 

“I must relieve poor, good Hennessey,” 
she went on, before he could summon his 
wits. ‘‘I’ll take the watch till midnight, and 
then I’ll have you called as usual. Good 
night.” 

‘‘Good night — goodnight! O don’t mind 
my foolishness in confiding in you! Or do 
mind it! I’m — I’m a fool! Punish me any 
way you want.” He stopped, furious with 
himself, wondering if she hated him, trying to 
summon back the self-respect he had lost in 
talking over those he had once loved. ‘‘Call 
me earlier if you need me, ’ ’ he said, and 
stood while she left the room. 


197 



Westover Crosses the Divide 


Westover Crosses the Divide 


The dawn arrived triumphantly, like a king 
who comes to his own, and Reginald West- 
over, opening his eyes, wore an expression of 
wonder, as if he beheld a new world. 

He stretched out all his limbs and relaxed 
with something of his old languid grace. 

“It’s very still,” he said, and smiled 
vaguely, as if the stillness had a meaning 
which he could not catch. “If my little 
girls — ” the smile deepened, became a con- 
traction, grew grotesque — remained fixed. 

After a little Papin laid his long fingers 
lightly on the eyes of the dead man and closed 
them. Evangeline went out of the room and 
Papin followed her, and sitting in the dusty 
courtyard, she made her wailing after the 
manner of women. 

“He was never lucky,” she said, sobbing 
quite unrestrainedly. “Nothing ever came 
out as he expected it to. When no one else 
disappointed him, I did. I would never like 
the persons he wanted me to like or do the 


201 


The Edge of Things 


things he wanted me to do. Oh, oh, the 
poor, poor lad!” 

Papin guessed that the dead man had been 
an unceasing cause of anxiety and chagrin to 
his family. The ardor of his sister’s pity 
seemed to suggest it. A woman may with- 
hold her love from the strong and capable, 
but for the inefficient, the faithless, she has 
maternal compassion. 

Two days later it was all over. Reginald 
Westover was laid in earth. 

The Herricks were there to witness it, and 
most of the herders. Papin read the words 
of the burial service. 

“To-morrow,” said Papin, “I shall set a 
cross at this place.” 

When they were all back at the house, 
Virginia Herrick tried to persuade Evangeline 
to stay with her for a time. She offered her 
arguments very graciously, but Evangeline 
rejected them with a slow shake of the head. 

“We need you here,” cooed Mrs. Herrick. 
“You can’t imagine what such society as 
yours would mean to us. I’m sure no one at 
your home can need you more.” 

“O as to that, I’m not needed elsewhere. 
I seemed to be always waiting and hoping to 


202 


Westover Crosses the Divide 


find Reggie. Now that’s all over I don’t 
know exactly what I am to look forward to. ’ ’ 
But her manner was not as helpless as her 
words. Papin noticed the suggestion of re- 
served strength in the little figure; saw that 
the sorrow made her restless and impatient. 

“ She’s made for happiness,” thought poor 
Papin. “But I could never help her to it. 
What business have I thinking of her at all? 
Even if I had any right to speak to her of — 
of staying here with me — it certainly wouldn’t 
be now, when she’s grieving. ” 

But in his heart of hearts he knew that her 
grief was tempered with relief, and that the 
reason he could not bring himself to bid her 
stay was because he was a coward. It had 
become his habit to think of his life as quite 
over and done with. He had regarded him- 
self as a man with a spiritual malady. Now 
that his pulses leaped within him, and his 
mind skurried away against his will on happy 
excursions in the field of anticipatory fancy, 
he was amazed. 

“It’s the sap of spring stirring in last 
year’s grasses,” he said. 

Everything seemed intensely dramatic to 
him — that burial by yellow sunlight on the 

203 


The Edge of Things 


desert; the presence of the Herricks, always 
interesting and more or less unobtainable to 
him; the herders, hushed and awkward; and 
that little, alert, sorrowing, nervous, eager- 
eyed mourner, who appeared only half to 
mourn — the mourner who had told him that 
when she served the poor she danced for 
them. Well, well, whatever came, she would 
never dance for him! 

(Ah, the sap stirring in last year’s grasses!) 

So he would not urge her to stay. 

“Tell us your plans,” said Virginia Her- 
rick, softly. “Shall you go back East?” 

Evangeline Westover looked at her wist- 
fully. “I think not,” she said, slowly. 
“I’ve half a notion to go to Los Angeles and 
— and teach school — or kindergarten. I’ve 
prepared myself after a fashion. I’d come to 
know new people. I’d like to begin all over. 
It’s always interesting — beginning over!” 
She sighed, and then sat lost in that daze 
which falls mercifully upon those who have 
endured a strain or a shock. 

It was agreed that the Herricks were to 
stay that night, and at dinner there was almost 
a festive air, despite the day’s funereal signifi- 
cance. 


204 


Westover Crosses the Divide 


“I often think how my friends are pitying 
me,” said Victoria Herrick. “They think 
I’m worse than dead, out here on the ranch, 
with no theater and no club and no church. 
But I can tell them they are wasting their 
sympathy. It’s a sort of gypsy joy that one 
gets into one’s blood here. Theoretically, of 
course, we live in a house, but as a matter of 
fact we live on air like orchids — grow fat on 
sunshine, and tall on ozone! I couldn’t stand 
a town now — and I suppose the town couldn’t 
stand me. Why, set me on Nancy, my 
mare, and give me a southwest wind, and I 
wouldn’t give up the desert here for any 
boulevard.’’ 

Papin looked at Herrick with something of 
the glance of a brave toward a medicine man. 
What necromancy had he used to teach this 
beautiful woman contentment here in the 
wilderness? 

“But next year,” said Herrick, “Mrs. 
Herrick and I are going to Paris. We’re 
going to have three months of life, and then 
we’ll come back here and talk it over.” 

“You ought to see the ’Toinette ranch — 
the Herrick’s place,” said Papin to Evange- 
line. “It’s a palace inside.” 

205 


The Edge of Things 


Then he blushed, because it seemed as if 
he had been making a plea. 

“O well,” said Mrs. Herrick, deprecat- 
ingly, “it isn’t anything wonderful that I 
should have made things cosy. I find 
it worth while in the rainy season, you 
know. ’ ’ 

“I know,” sighed Papin, and thought of 
the black nights and the dull days, with the 
gray rain falling, and the desert repeating an 
endless tale like an ancient idiot. 

At ten the Herricks retired, and Evange- 
line went to her room to pack. She intended 
leaving the next morning. 

“She’s become intensely conventional of a 
sudden,” thought Papin, with bitterness. 
“She will not stay one night under my roof 
now that poor wretch is gone. It’s an affront 
— such precipitancy — and I should think she’d 
know I take it that way.” 

Affronted he might be, but it is neverthe- 
less true that he paced the beaten ground of 
his gallery for hours that night. She had so 
little packing to do that it was incredible how 
she was occupying herself. But surely, after 
her labors were over she would come out for 
a breath of the cool night air. It might be 

206 


Westover Crosses the Divide 


said to be luscious this night. It was as kind 
as a warmed and spiced wine, and it caressed 
the lungs that inhaled it. The sky was of 
blue-black velvet, and the crescent moon and 
countless stars made a tender light. A swift 
and strong bird beat the air above Papin’s 
head; a wild, lonely creature cried from out 
the darkness, reminding the factor that he 
was among the untamed places of earth. A 
pony sniffled in the corral, and a sleeping 
herder cried out sharply, as if from a goading 
dream. Everything took to itself a signifi- 
cance. Life appeared to grow more tense 
every moment — and suddenly, the draperies 
of her door parted and she came out there in 
the night! 

Papin stood in the shadow for a moment, 
and she came near him, unconsciously. An 
indescribable freshness pervaded the negligee 
she wore, and her hair, loosely braided, hung 
down her back. The very spirit of that fra- 
grant night she seemed, and she slowly 
unbraided her hair and shook it out to the 
breeze. 

“The princess has come from her bath,’’ 
mused Papin, and he tried to slip away further 
into the shadows and escape, for now that she 

207 


The Edge of Things 


had come he felt that he had committed a pro- 
fane impertinence in waiting for her. But 
she saw him and gave a little cry, half of sur- 
prise and half of — fear? Papin was not per- 
fectly sure it was fear. 


208 


Papin Tells Something More 




Papin Tells Something More 

“I don’t see why you cry out, ” said Papin, 
angrily — all the more angrily because of his 
impertinent, quickly checked suspicion that 
her emotion might not have been all fear. 

The girl gave a nervous and half-mocking 
laugh — the first laugh Papin had heard from 
her for many days. 

“I don’t know why the coyote out there 
howls,” she retorted, “and really, I wouldn’t 
take the liberty of asking him.” Her voice 
still had the strained and weary sound of one 
who has wept much; but for all that she 
seemed eager for the badinage. (It is won- 
derful how quickly a flower that has been 
rain-beaten, will struggle up to renew its 
bloom when the fairing winds begin to blow!) 

“You wish me to go away, I suppose,” 
continued Papin, sullen as a boy. 

“I hadn’t formulated that wish yet, but I 
shall, if you desire. ’ ’ 

“It’s natural that you should want me 
to go.” But he remained as stationary as 


The Edge of Things 

the yucca-tree that reared its shaft before 
them. 

“Perhaps it is. But I’m rather artificial. ” 

Papin sat down on a bench. Miss West- 
over flung out her hair to the breeze and let 
the wind blow the moist strands into gay 
bannerets. 

“I should say at the present moment that 
you were anything but artificial, ’ ’ he com- 
mented. 

“Do you imagine that I am going to apolo- 
gize for my appearance?” asked Evangeline, 
with uncertain gayety. “As a matter of fact, 
I am heartily annoyed that you should have 
seen me this way, but nothing can force me 
to say so — officially.” 

Her simplicity made a maddening appeal 
to Papin’s imagination. The very common- 
placeness of her remarks established an inti- 
macy between them of a different character 
from any that had hitherto existed. The idea 
that she would presently be gone pierced him 
like a sword thrust. 

“How do you like Mrs. Herrick?” he 
asked with abrupt irrelevance. 

“Evangeline tossed back her locks and 
straightened herself. 


212 


Papin Tells Something More 


“O she’s the dearest!” she cried, in a 
tone of enthusiasm Papin had not yet heard 
from her. “How beautiful she is — and how 
surprising — like those lovely yucca flowers out 
there in the dust! O when I saw her, so 
delicate and fine, in this wild place, so heavenly 
kind to me, so courteous to the men, I won- 
dered you did not all fall down and worship 
her.” 

“Herrick does,” said Papin under his 
breath. 

“And you would if you dared?” smiled 
Evangeline. “Well, it is the destiny of some 
people to find happiness everywhere. Poor 
Reggie could not — here or anywhere — Oh, 
poor Reggie! Mr. Papin, I ought to be old 
enough to have a little patience with the course 
of nature — with death, for example. But 
when I think that Reggie is all unknowing of 
this delicious night, that he cannot see these 
near, bright stars — ” 

“Oh,” broke in Papin, impatient with 
sorrow, “why not reflect that he cannot 
suffer any more? Do you know what home- 
longings such as he had are? Well, they 
are horrible little rats, and they gnaw, gnaw, 
gnaw! I tell you, he’s well out of it. But 

213 


The Edge of Things 


we who cannot get under the monkey-cactus 
and forget that and other grotesque things, 
but must stay and contemplate them all, who 
have a thousand thoughts that come out like 
buds and die before they reach flower or fruit 
for want of some one to culture them — we’re 
the ones that are to be pitied.” 

Evangeline twisted her hair up on her head 
in a loose coil, her white arms gleaming 
beneath the sleeves of her kimono. 

“But there’ll be no pity in your heart,” 
continued Papin, hunting for a grievance. 
“You’ll go away from here and forget us. 
And we’ll stay here and remember. This is 
the Devil’s place for remembering! In the 
nights to come — there will be an everlasting 
string of them, and no one will mean any more 
than another — I’ll be haunted with a vision of 
you standing there, all tender as you are now, 
with that smile on your lips, for all of your 
heartache; and I’ll — ” 

Evangeline interrupted him. “I’m glad 
you’ve straightened out your pronouns, Mr. 
Papin,” she said, in a tremulous attempt to 
postpone a climacteric moment. “You said 
‘we’ and I didn’t know whether you meant Bud 
Hennessey or Billy Dox or the Chinaman.” 

214 


Papin Tells Something More 


“I meant the coolie, of course,” said 
Papin. He got up and came toward her. 
She rolled her arms in the flowing sleeves of 
her gown and looked at him with an exagger- 
ated gravity. 

“You are making game of me,” accused 
Papin, enraged at that piquant solemnity. 

“I don’t think I am,” said the girl, as if 
it were a matter of speculation with her. “I 
really hope I’m not. It would be such a poor 
return for your hospitality!” 

Then, swiftly, a recollection of the nature 
of that hospitality came to her — the comfort 
he had given her dying brother, the respect 
he had shown her, the manner in which he 
had tried to share her sorrow. She flung 
away her woman’s weapons with disgust. 

“O forgive me,” she cried. “Believe 
me, I am not laughing at you! How could 
I laugh at you after all you have done for me 
— after all you have been to me? Mr. Papin, 
do not be offended. I couldn’t endure it. 
I — oh, I mean to do right, but the place is 
so strange, you — I — I ought to say good 
night. Only it seems cowardly to do that — 
now. ’ ’ 

“You are afraid,” reproached Papin. 

215 


The Edge of Things 


“You are afraid of me — as you ought to be. 
For I am going to ask you to give up your 
life for me. I am going to ask you — knowing 
how women sacrifice themselves — to stay here 
with me and be my wife. You ought to be 
afraid of this place, for it is the desert, and I 
am going to ask you to make your home in 
it. I want you to live here in this wild sand- 
waste. Do you understand? You call your- 
self a coward. Well, it would frighten any one 
to listen to what I have just said — to be urged 
to live in a desert with a worn, sad cynic. 
You saw the scoria on your way out here — 
those lava buttes, scarred with burnt-out fires? 
There are miles of them. The road through 
them seems to lead into the gateway of the 
place of lost souls. In fact, it does — it leads 
here — here, where I am asking you to stay!” 

What had come over the moonlight that it 
seemed to resolve itself into globules of radi- 
ance, like enormous jewels? What troubled 
the stars that they had ceased to be stationary 
in their places? Why was the adobe floor of 
the patio no longer firm beneath his feet? 
Above all, why did the woman, who but now 
had been flesh and blood, look so like a spirit? 
Was she drifting away from him — a flushed, 

216 


Papin Tells Something More 

smiling, tearful, palpitant, too lovely Eury- 
dice? 

It seemed to him, worn as he was with his 
monkish and insignificant days, that if he 
could — a more prosperous Orpheus — clasp 
her to him, that he should swoon for sheer 
delight. He moved toward her blindly, but 
she grew more spirit-like, more a thing of 
moonshine and mid-summer madness. 

“lam not afraid of lost souls, ’ ’ she sobbed. 
“Send to-morrow and have the padre brought. 
I am going to stay. ’ ’ 

She vanished. Papin stretched out empty 
arms. Or — had she come again? No, noth- 
ing gleamed in the pallid light save the yucca 
flowers, a symbol of the blossoming of waste 
places. The moonlight might have been 
some lucent liquid of oblivion, so abundantly 
did it pour upon the earth. A mysterious 
word was creeping along the desert — an 
ancient word of man’s immemorial joy. 

She was going to stay, this little creature! 
Delicate as a child, brave as a man, loving as 
a woman — the dear little brown thing with the 
abundant hair, the trick of looking mournful 
and coquettish at once, the habit of serving 
others — of dancing for them! 

217 


The Edge of Things 


Some time, perhaps, long, long from now, 
when he dared ask favors of her, she would 
dance there on the hard earthen floor. She 
would emerge in the moonlight, clad in white; 
she would comfort him as she had comforted 
others with an exhibition of her beauty, her 
grace, her suppleness, her incomparable dark 
loveliness! 

O profane and despicable man! (So he 
reproached himself, beating his hands against 
his brow.) What old-time spirit of masculine 
pride and ownership, what disguised sensuality 
lurks in love, debasing it! She, the pure one, 
a martyr for his sake, compassionate, coura- 
geous, she surely is to confer greater privi- 
leges than this! She is to reveal wonders of 
purity and love in her eyes. She is to in- 
struct. She is to lead. Her little feet shall 
tread holy ways as well as flowery ones! 

More beneficently upon the desert fell the 
silver light. The ground wind became articu- 
late, murmuring the mysterious news. Louis 
Papin felt oblivion steal over him graciously. 
He threw himself in a hammock. Sweet 
odors of the desert flowers came to him, 
and he was conscious of them. The sands 
stretched out — -a shining sea. Even the long 

218 


Papin Tells Something More 


waves of the beach were simulated in the 
wind-buffeted moon-gleam. At length he 
fancied he heard the slow sob of the surf — 
its waters seemed to reach him — he was 
deliciously submerged. 

He slept, and in his heart, treasured a 
dream like a jewel. 


219 








The Lady of the Northern Lights 


The Lady of the Northern Lights 

Thomas Letlow and Dilling Brown, gentle- 
men adventurers, shook the dust of the desert off 
their feet and hastened toward San Francisco, 
where they were to take ship for the Far North. 

They had for spur two things, to which only 
the dead, the very foolish, and the very wise 
are indifferent, to wit, gold and woman. 
Therefore, they traveled fast. But, Tantalus 
help them, there were delays! First a horse 
fell sick and had to be left for the gluttonous 
birds of the waste. (The coyotes have noses, 
too!) And there was a washout where the 
railroad crossed the path of a mountain stream; 
and what with this and that, when they reached 
San Francisco the boat they were to have 
taken was gone. 

Letlow, who was after the gold, deported 
himself like a philosopher. 

“ There are other boats,” he said; “we 
can sail as well next week. ’ ’ 

But Brown, who followed happiness in the 
more alluring form, fell ill of impatience — he 

223 


The Edge of Things 


being weakened by long suffering of mind and 
body — and lay, listless, near a window which 
looked upon the loveliest bay of the sunset sea. 

“I suppose there is Destiny in it,” he de- 
clared to his friend. “From first to last it 
has been Destiny. How improbable, when 
you come to think of it, that I should have 
left the East, where I belonged, and come to 
so desperate a place as the Edge of Things” 
— for so he called the range where his sparse 
herds had browsed on dusty “filleree” and 
desert flowers — “only to find there a foot- 
print in the sand, so to speak!” 

“Destiny does mix up horribly in our 
affairs,” smiled Letlow. Personally, he ap- 
peared to have reasons for approving of her 
intrusions. 

“I shall never forget,” said Brown, remi- 
niscent, and more or less maudlin, after the 
manner of lovers, “how I felt when I entered 
that vacated adobe out there in the world of 
yellow sand. The sun grinned at me like a 
Cheshire cat — you don’t know what a sardonic 
smirk the desert sun can put on, Letlow! Well, 
I went in, and almost at the first, dead still 
though the place was, it seemed as if I was 
met at the door and welcomed. ’ ’ 

224 


The Lady of the Northern Lights 


“Have a cigar,” said Letlow. Brown 
took it, but held it aimlessly. 

“There on the chimney was that inscrip- 
tion that was to comfort me in all the days to 
come, ‘He, watching over Israel, slumbereth 
not nor sleeps.’ There were the little jugs 
and jars, made by her unskilled fingers and 
baked in the sun; there was her little bed, 
her mirror, her dressing-table, her thimble, 
her riding glove!” 

He took a small blue celluloid thimble out 
of his pocket and regarded it affectionately 
for a moment before replacing it. 

“It helped me to understand myself,” he 
concluded. “It enabled me to become ac- 
quainted with my own soul. ’ ’ 

“You are a lucky dog, then,” commented 
Letlow. “Heaven knows I’m an inscrutable 
hieroglyph to myself. ’ ’ 

“Well, you’re plain reading to me,” 
smiled Brown, turning a mournful yet affec- 
tionate eye upon his friend. “Of all well- 
made, clear-typed, lucid, straightforward, and 
corking books, you take the cake.” 

“I didn’t expect to draw in such a big 
one as that,” said Letlow, with a comical 
frown. 


225 


The Edge of Things 


“Well, I’m no confectioner,” laughed 
Brown, “but I like to try my hand at taffy 
now and then. And you deserve it! Why, 
heavens, man, when I journeyed to Papin’s 
that night, with night-hags hounding me, and 
looked in through the window — sullen and 
hateful and horrible, and at the end of hope 
— and saw you, it was like a glimpse of 
heaven to the souls below!” 

He grew uncertain in his tones and held 
out a thin, mahogany-colored hand, which 
Letlow shook violently in his two firm, white 
ones. “Like heaven to the souls below,” 
repeated Brown, and lay back on his couch 
for a time in silence. 

“Then,” he resumed, after a while, “you 
turned into a kindly Mephistopheles, Tommy, 
and offered me life — this kind and that kind. 
But your Faust was inert, and was tempted 
by none of these things. At the last came 
the revelation that you were going to Alaska 
on the same ship with my desert woman. ’ ’ 
He hesitated a moment, and flashed out what 
Letlow was prone to call one of his iridescent 
smiles. “Wasn’t it corking,” he asked, 
“that coincidence?” 

“O well,” said Letlow, in the easy tone 

226 


The Lady of the Northern Lights 


of one who stands in with the Fates, “ ‘There 
is a destiny that shapes our ends’ — ” 

“Yes,” acquiesced Brown, dreamily. 
“Then we came on. It was a new and won- 
derful feeling to me, Tommy — that pursuit of 
a woman. I tried to fancy how we would 
meet, I knowing so much of her, owing her 
such a debt of gratitude; attracted by her 
spirit alone, as the body and soul of no other 
woman had ever attracted me; she knowing 
nothing of me! What should we say? How 
should I state my case? The situation was 
unique, Tommy.” 

“Was? Say is, man. It grows uniquer 
and uniquer.” He arose, and selecting a 
carnation from a bouquet which he had pro- 
vided for the enlivenment of the sick-room, 
placed it in his buttonhole. 

“Every day,” said Brown, his eyes reach- 
ing seaward, “I said I was one day nearer 
her. I had such visions and hopes! And 
then we reached here after those infuriating 
delays and she was gone.” 

“O well, cheer up,” said Letlow. “It’s 
an accident that gives a little zest to the chase. ’ ’ 
Brown raised himself upright and shot a 
reproachful glance out of his hollow eyes. 

227 


The Edge of Things 


“Zest?” he said, “Zest? You know 
nothing about it, Letlow. It makes me feel 
that I am one of that accursed brotherhood 
who forever chase phantoms! I shall never 
meet her — I feel it — and I’ll never get over 
my longing to meet her — the one woman, 
Tommy, I swear, who could have understood 
me.” 

“You’re worse at croaking than a bullfrog 
in May,” snapped Letlow, with an oath. 
And he put on his hat with a gesture of angry 
despair. He was back in an hour. 

“They tell me Cusack was precipitate,” 
he said, “and that his boat will be plowing 
through ice half the time. But I’ve found 
another fool almost as bad. He’s got a 
brother up there in some sort of icefield 
starving, I believe, after the fashion of the 
country, and he’s pushing up with supplies. 
He sails day after to-morrow — ” 

“He’ll take us?” cried Brown, sharply. 

“Yes, you sweep. Now shut up and let 
me have a little peace.” 

He stretched himself out with a novel and 
a pipe like one who has earned his reward. 


228 


In Taku Harbor 



In Taku Harbor 


Taku Harbor, Alaska, is a safe and melan- 
choly spot. Glacial winds blow upon it with 
their indescribable and delicious clarification. 
At night, a boat shoving into the keen point 
of sea which pierces the land is walled by 
black and mournful mountains, so that the 
sea takes to itself the aspect of a dark mirror 
in which the stars are reflected with ex- 
traordinary brilliancy. 

It is a place of great peace and loneliness, 
which the little ill-smelling Indian village ap- 
pears to accentuate rather than mitigate. 

Here in the dead of night came the Scor- 
pion, the boat — small, staunch, impertinent, 
and swift — upon which Dilling Brown and 
Thomas Letlow had taken passage. 

“The Gateway of the Shades,” muttered 
Brown to his friend, as the plucky boat stuck 
its copper nose into the crisping waters. 

“There’s another steamer tied up there,” 
said Letlow. “Curious! It must be from 
British Columbia. They said at San Fran- 

231 


The Edge of Things 


cisco and again at Tacoma, that, barring 
Cusack’s Lotus Flower, we were the first to 
come up this year. ’ ’ 

Brown said nothing. He left the taffrail 
and went to his steamer-chair in the lee of the 
cabin and lay back in it rather heavily. Let- 
low, his own heart beating somewhat faster 
than usual, paced the narrow deck alone. 

“Ahoy there!” came a voice from the 
bridge. 

No one on the other boat bestirred him- 
self. 

“They didn’t expect company,” said the 
second officer to Letlow. “I guess every 
one is asleep. ” 

But the man on the bridge was insistent, 
and there presently sounded a gruff re- 
sponse. 

“Ahoy!” 

“What’s your name?” 

“Lotus Flower.” 

“San Francisco?” 

“Aye, sir.” 

“Where bound?” 

“Juneau.” 

“They are all asleep,” said Letlow to 
Brown. “But in the morning — ” 

232 


In Taku Harbor 


“In the morning they may be gone,” said 
Brown. “It would be my luck!” 

“Confound your luck!” growled Letlow. 
“You make me tired, Brown!” 

“Go to bed, then,” said Brown. And 
Letlow did. 

So by ways of desert and sea, he had 
come to his love! How sad and how still had 
been the long reaches of fjord, strait, and 
sound! Dull blue the sky, dark green the 
shores, humid and heavy the air, solemn the 
waters, long and heavily quiet the days. 
Now, here, by some chance, he had over- 
taken her — his love of the brave heart! 

She was sleeping near him. She knew 
nothing of him, but he had come to inform 
her, to awake her! After the hundred years 
of sleep, he would kiss her lips! 

His boat was anchored. It was drifting 
toward that other boat, as if it longed to 
touch it! Well, let it reach and hold it! As 
for him, he would watch. By no vicious 
sleight should that other vessel escape him 
again. As Letlow had insinuated — with ex- 
traordinary intensity — the time had passed 
when he could talk of luck. Now his destiny 
was in his own hands. 


333 


The Edge of Things 


But what was that? A great ribbon of deli- 
cate brilliancy was flung up from the horizon 
to the zenith, held there a second, and drawn 
back. The darkness palpitated where its ver- 
nal splendor had shone. Suddenly the Spirit 
of the North crowned herself with crimson 
and gold. The glittering coronal sat upon 
her brow regally. 

“It is fit there should be a celebration,” 
said Brown, with a lover’s egotism. 

Spears of white, of crimson, of green, be- 
gan to dart heavenward. There ensued a 
splendid sport in which these living colors 
appeared to hold a tourney. 

“The crimson wins!” shouted Brown to 
the second officer. 

“Ten to one on the green,” laughed back 
the man. 

The swift currents seemed to touch the 
rigging of the ship. 

“It looks like the Last Day, doesn’t it?” 
remarked the second officer. 

“It doesn’t matter,” cried Brown. He 
shook his fist at a menacing arm of “white 
samite, mystic, wonderful,” that hung above 
the ship. 

Something caught his attention. A 

234 


In Taku Harbor 


woman’s figure appeared upon the upper 
deck of the Lotus Flower. She mounted with 
agility to the bridge. She stood there, dark, 
slight, inspired, while the streamers of light 
played about it. She lifted up long arms as if 
to dip the fingers in that impetuous, incandes- 
cent element which played about her. 

Brown thrilled with an all-comprehending 
consciousness. 

“A woman!” ejaculated the second 
officer. 

“The Lady of the Northern Lights,” said 
Brown, from his dry throat. 

The second officer went below. Diking 
climbed to the bridge of the Scorpion — it was 
still a little lower than that of the Lotus 
Flower. The two boats continued to near 
one another. The air was vibratory to a 
startling degree. Every sound was empha- 
sized — the groaning of the distant glacial river, 
the sharp sob of the surf, the lamenting of the 
wind in the pines, the aerial detonations from 
frost or electricity — Diking could not decide 
which. 

“A mystic place and hour for the meet- 
ing!” he thought. 

He knew that on her eyrie she was aware 

235 


The Edge of Things 


of him on his. He spoke out, and as he 
spoke the upper heavens seemed to be dis- 
solved into a violet liquid which streamed 
down upon the ships. 

“A wonderful night, madam,” he said. 

It is written that there is a brotherhood, 
nurtured in many lands, speaking many 
tongues, of unrecorded membership, yet rec- 
ognizing each other whether they meet in 
marts or seas or purlieus — the Brotherhood 
of the Modulated Voice. Katherine Cusack, 
for a month accustomed chiefly to the deep 
monotonous voices of the sailors, answered 
the call of one of her own kind. 

“It is wonderful indeed.” The voice 
had a touch that confessed her Irish ancestry. 
“And lonely as the world’s end.” 

‘ ‘ I have known a lonelier place, ’ ’ answered 
Dilling Brown. 

“Have you that?” The modulation was 
deep now. “And where, if I may make so 
bold?” (There was every indication of at 
least two Irish forebears.) 

“In the desert.” Dilling held his voice 
as steady as he could. 

“The desert?” The voice indicated a 
reluctance to enter upon the subject. 

236 


In Taku Harbor 


“Yes.” He would tell her no more of 
that just then. “But this is of all places the 
wildest. ” 

“It’s an enchantment, I’m thinking,” she 
said. “We must watch out or we ’ 11 be turned 
into goblins. ’ ’ And indeed at that moment 
she was bathed in the weird radiance. 

“Why not?” laughed Dilling — and the 
laugh seemed to reach down to the foundations 
of his being and to flood him with the joy of 
living. “Are you afraid?” 

“A little,” she admitted. “I feel as if I 
might be tied to the end of one of these crim- 
son ribbons and snatched away into the blue 
ice crevasses and left to live there in the 
frozen world.” 

“Like enough,” admitted Dilling, and he 
intruded a vital question, “When do you 
leave here?” 

“Not till to-morrow night, I’m told.” 

The captain of the Scorpion joined Dilling. 
A group of the crew gathered below. After 
a little the fires of the North began to pale. 
The woman on the bridge of the Lotus Flower 
became a dark and silent shadow. Dilling 
longed with an almost irresistible longing to 
take her in to the fire, the light, the comfort. 


237 


The Edge of Things 


He felt absurdly intimate with her — the fact 
that she might be getting chilled concerned 
him. It was with difficulty that he restrained 
himself from calling out to inquire if she were 
warmly enough clad. Had he done so, his 
voice would have had in it that tone of tender- 
ness and autocracy which a man employs in 
addressing the one woman in the world. 
Some one spoke to him and he turned to 
answer. When he looked again, that slight 
figure on the bridge was gone. He went to 
his bunk and slept heavily, as people do after 
a sorrow or a joy. 

The next day dawned clear. The sky and 
water had the depths and brilliancy of rare 
sapphires. Dilling Brown ate sparsely and 
went ashore with his friend. At the village 
he saw two ladies buying silver trinkets of the 
Indians. 

“Letlow, ” he said, “look!” 

“I behold!” "said Letlow, quite solemnly. 
The elder was Mrs. Cusack, wife of the cap- 
tain of the Lotus Flower, and aunt in marriage 
to Katherine. She was a dark, capable-look- 
ing, strong, plain woman, dressed in furs. 
Her companion stood at least five feet ten in 
her lynx boots. Her head was carried with a 

238 


In Taku Harbor 


peculiarly valiant poise, her eyes were large, 
patient, and quiet. 

“They are dark blue,” said Diking, under 
his breath. “I remember Papin thought per- 
haps they were. ’ ’ 

An aspect of serenity distinguished her. 
Her face was fair and the cheeks and lips 
deeply colored. Dark brows all but met 
above her straight nose. She gave the im- 
pression of having too much hair. It escaped 
provokingly from the little cap of lynx fur and 
softened the height of her forehead. And her 
smile — but Diking was to discover this later — 
had a piquancy, caused by going up a little 
further on one side than on the other. This 
mitigated the gravity of a face which else 
might have been disconcertingly noble in its 
expression. 

Letlow marched straight upon them. 

“I am looking for Captain Cusack, 
madam,” he said, addressing the elder 
woman. “We are the men who hoped to 
take passage with him at San Francisco.” 

He conducted introductions boldly. 

“I think I know where to find my hus- 
band, ’ ’ Mrs. Cusack said. She turned toward 
the salmon cannery. Letlow joined her, in- 

239 


The Edge of Things 


quiring about the voyage of the Lotus Flower. 
Dilling Brown, steadying himself, telling him- 
self over and over that it was not a dream, 
placed himself by the side of Katherine 
Cusack. She turned toward him with a 
friendly smile. 

“I have an idea that you are the gentle- 
man with whom I was talking last night, ’ ’ she 
said. He nodded, but could not smile. He 
wondered what she would do if he were to 
say: “Do you know you are going to marry 
me? Do you know I have followed you hun- 
dreds of miles? Do you know this is the 
moment to which I have been looking for- 
ward for two years?” What he actually said 
was: “I never dreamed of such a scene as 
that of last night. ’ ’ 

“Nor I,” she said; “but then, I am always 
being surprised. Just as I get accustomed to 
the ways of earth — or that part of earth in 
which I chance to be — something amazing 
happens. ” 

“We seem of very little importance up 
here, ’ ’ commented Brown, looking up at the 
mountain solitudes about him. 

“Of very little indeed,” acquiesced the 
girl. “But that is comfortable, too. It less- 


240 


In Taku Harbor 


ens my sense of responsibility and makes me 
feel like a child — and I like that. We’re 
looked after, I’m sure, Mr. Brown.” 

Dilling leaned rather heavily upon the stick 
he carried. 

“ ‘He, watching over Israel, slumbereth 
not nor sleeps,’ ” he quoted, slowly. That 
quiet grave glance turned full upon him then. 

‘‘Is that a favorite quotation of yours, Mr. 
Brown?” 

‘‘Of all things ever written I have said it 
oftenest, ” said Brown. He looked straight 
back in her eyes. They were both seeing, as 
in a vision, the ‘‘floor of the world,” hot and 
yellow, an adobe hut, a rude room, a fire- 
place, a bold inscription. Days of courage, 
pain, comfort, adventure, introspection, dread, 
fear, despair, passed before them. 

They became aware that they were alone. 
Letlow and Mrs. Cusack had gone into the 
cannery. 

‘‘Let us walk on the beach,” said Brown, 
hoarsely. They turned toward it. The girl 
was quiet. A heavy shadow appeared to 
have descended upon her. Yet she walked 
with a firm, strong step. Her whole carriage 
was gallant. 


241 


The Edge of Things 


“You said last night,” she ventured 
at length, “that you knew a lonelier place 
than this — the desert. May I ask what 
desert?” 

‘ ‘ One where I dwelt for two years, ’ ’ said 
Dilling. “I lived in an adobe and tended — 
and tended sheep.” 

“Oh,” she cried, “oh!” 

“I had a coolie to cook,” he went on, 
shaken by some mysterious fear and tumult, 
“and two men to help me herd. There were 
the sheep, the days, the nights, the silences, 
the thoughts. They are all mixed up together, 
you know. * ’ 

She made no answer at all. She seemed 
to draw nearer to him. The fur of her jacket 
brushed Dilling’ s arm. His trembling in- 
creased. He had a sense of needing to rest. 
His breath troubled him — his heart seemed to 
be failing him. 

“Katherine!” The voice came sharply 
into the fateful silence. 

“It is my aunt,” said the girl. Dilling 
took hold of her arm to help her along. He 
could feel that she, like himself, was deeply 
moved. They caught up with the others. 

“We’ll go back to the Scorpion, Brown,” 

242 


In Taku Harbor 


said Letlow, “and transfer our effects to the 
Lotus Flower. This is Captain Cusack, Mr. 
Brown. You see, Miss Cusack, we insist on 
being your fellow-voyagers. It is useless to 
try to escape us. ’ ’ 


243 


\ 







Katherine Gets Her Thimble 



Katherine Gets Her Thimble 


The cabin of the Lotus Flower was yellow 
— most appropriately. The cheerful ther- 
mometer on the wall recorded seventy-five 
degrees of heat. An excellent woodcut of 
the “ Northwest Passage” hung at the aft 
end, and Chilkat blankets brightened the bare 
spaces. 

As the good little boat puffed along the 
wonderful reaches of the Inland Passage, and 
the gulls, disturbed up their immemorial 
haunts, made noisy protestation against in- 
truders, the inhabitants of the cabin contented 
themselves after the manner of good travelers. 

Letlow sat by the window, where he could 
look out. Mrs. Cusack embroidered pome- 
granates — in defiance of her surroundings — 
on a linen centerpiece. Captain Cusack and 
his niece played chess. Dilling Brown did 
nothing at all, and did it rather intensely. 

“Two moves and I have you!” declared 
Captain Cusack. 

“I don’t believe it,” declared his niece, 

247 


The Edge of Things 


with the fatuity of mere woman — who may 
not comprehend the inevitable when it takes 
mathematical form. 

“Move!” dared Captain Cusack. 

Woman can at least obey. 

“Check!” The Captain shouted, with 
masculine satisfaction. 

Miss Cusack sulked prettily. 

“At least,” she said, “I know how to 
sew.” She picked some work out of a sew- 
ing-basket. 

“There, I forgot I’d lost my thimble! 
Think of being a thousand miles from a 
thimble ! ’ ’ 

Her dark brows met in a simulated frown. 
As a matter of fact, she was not in the least 
sorry to escape this feminine occupation. 

Dilling Brown put his fingers in his vest 
pocket and leaned forward, presenting the 
girl with a little blue celluloid thimble. 

“I am almost sure it will fit,” he said. 

Miss Cusack adjusted it slowly. She felt 
the man’s eyes fixed on her with a disconcert- 
ing scrutiny. She looked at the little thimble 
with widening eyes. Then she arose and 
walked the length of the cabin and stood look- 
ing out at the procession of mist-shrouded 

248 


Katherine Gets Her Thimble 


hills. Dilling followed her. He stood close 
to her. After a moment he put an irrelevant 
question. 

“Is it not your opinion that that shelf looks 
rather absurd with those things on it?” he 
asked. 

The steward had plaited some napkins in 
the form of ships and put them up for orna- 
ment on a little shelf. 

“As absurd as possible,” she acquiesced. 

“Take them down,” he commanded; “I 
will put something in the place of them.” 

He left the cabin, and she did as he bade 
her. When he returned he held in his hands 
certain crude, graceful jugs of sun-baked clay. 
He put them on the shelf and regarded them 
critically. 

“It is fortunate there is a ledge,” he said; 
“they would be in danger of being broken.” 

Captain Cusack came out and eyed them 
with disdain. “I can’t say,” he declared, 
“that I think them much of an improvement 
on the napkins, Mr. Brown. At least you 
could tell what the ships were intended to 
be.” 

Brown flushed; Letlow laughed. 

“I think they are quite fetching,” de- 

249 


The Edge of Things 


dared Mrs. Cusack. “Katherine, you used 
to do something of that sort now and then, 
didn’t you?” 

Katherine made no answer. She moved 
again to the window. 

“You made those” Brown whispered in 
her ear. 

Her whole manner indicated a cognizance 
of his words, but she said nothing. He took 
from his pocket a packet of letters wrapped 
in oil-skin. He put it silently into her hand. 
She walked slowly down the length of the hall 
to her state-room and entered and closed the 
door. The Cusacks were oblivious, but 
Letlow saw it all. 

“Let’s take the deck, old man,” he said, 
under his breath. 

A heavy mist was gathering. They went 
out and paced the deck like dynamic specters. 

“You’re a fool, Dilling, ” said Letlow, 
cordially. 

“Thank you,” retorted Brown; “but 
what of that?” 

“Couldn’t you have waited a decent length 
of time before springing all that on the girl? 
She’ll take you for a lunatic.” 

“Walk a little faster,” said Brown, cheer- 

250 


Katherine Gets Her Thimble 


fully ignoring these observations. “I like to 
feel myself moving!” 

They pounded around the deck like Ber- 
serkers till the supper-bell rang — and at that 
meal Katherine Cusack did not appear. 

Letlow looked reproachfully at his friend. 
Brown smiled vaguely, ate little, gloomed and 
grinned alternately. After tea he played cards 
till ten and lost every point a man possibly 
could. 

They all turned in. He also made a 
feint of going to his state-room, but as soon 
as he thought himself safe, he stole out on 
deck. 

The mist had lifted and the moon was out. 
The still and mysterious world was glorified. 
The shores were as beautiful and solemn as 
the Island of the Dead. A wolf cried from 
the inner shore. At the prow stood a shrouded 
figure. 

Brown went toward it breathlessly. 

“You are here,” he whispered; “you are 
here!” 

She half turned. 

“Yes,” she said. She wore that piquant, 
deprecating smile. 

“Well?” he whispered. 

251 


The Edge of Things 


“Well, I think I — I would like to — to 
know you, Mr. Brown. ’ ’ 

“Know me?” Brown gave a short laugh. 
“Know me?” The laugh became a roar. It 
troubled the echoes. It chagrined Miss 
Cusack. No doubt it disturbed the sleepers 
in their bunks. “Know me? If you don’t 
know me now, you’ll never know me. If you 
don’t know me no one ever will.” 

“O,” said the girl, “don’t laugh at me! 
Don’t make me feel that I fall short of what 
you expected, please.” 

Dilling seized the hand that had been ex- 
tended in protestation and carried it to his lips. 

“Let me remove this mitten,” he said; “I 
have something here I fancy will fit this hand 
much better.” 

He drew from his pocket a worn riding- 
glove, and with nice care fitted it over the 
girl’s chilly fingers. As he did so he kept up 
his pleading with valorous assiduity. 

“Never was a glove more abject than this 
one when I found it,” he said. “It lay, 
covered with dust, in that deserted room out 
at the Edge of Things. ‘Poor little glove,’ 
I said to it, ‘what hard-hearted mistress has 
left you here?’ I put it in my pocket. I 

252 


Katherine Gets Her Thimble 


comforted it. After a time when Louis 
Papin — God bless him! — told me your story, 
I knew that perhaps it had gone with you that 
dreadful day when you rode out to your poor 
brother. ’ ’ 

“Oh, don’t, please, please!” whispered 
Katherine, with a choked sob. 

“Well, well, then, I won’t! Only this I 
must say, that after a time the glove got to 
comforting me. In the days when the story 
of your brother ate into me like a cancer till I 
feared my fate was to be like his own, the little 
glove, lying at my heart, spoke courage to me. ’ ’ 

He looked very boyish just then. He was 
what his Aunt Betty, who saw him through 
his boyhood, would have called in his “sweet” 
mood. The girl regarded him with an almost 
maternal glance. She evidently thought him 
sweet, too. 

He looked up, suddenly, having finished 
his task of fitting the glove. 

“I refuse to believe,” he said, “that you 
care for anybody else.” 

Katherine made a little teasing mouth at 
him. 

“But do you?” he asked. 

She laughed lightly. 

2 53 


The Edge of Things 


“I love — ” she hesitated, and the Aurora, 
beginning to leap in the sky, menaced her 
playfully. 

“Yes?” Brown straightened himself and 
stood ready. “Yes?” 

“No one. ” 

“Ah! And never did?” 

“Never. ” 

“You are telling the truth?” 

She tried to look offended — then smiled 
with a certain tenderness. 

“If I ever bothered to lie, Mr. Brown — 
which I do not — I would not lie to you . ’ ’ 

“Oh!” he came nearer with an abrupt 
motion. 

“Mr. Brown!” There was forbiddance in 
her aspect. The pale glow in the North 
began to brighten. The swift javelins were 
once more tossed across the sky. 

“My Lady of the Northern Lights!” he 
breathed. 

Any one who looked at her would have 
known her temperament to be ardent. His 
devodon, his story, his chaste, ecstatic face, 
were making their appeal. But she made 
another attempt to deny him. 

“I can promise nothing,” she said, “ex- 

254 


Katherine Gets Her Thimble 


cept that I will, if you wish, continue the 
acquaintance. ’ ’ 

They were the inept and insincere words 
of a woman, unsophisticated and tender, tor- 
mented by her own emotions. 

Dilling gave a boyish laugh. 

“But come to think of it, perhaps you ask 
nothing, ’ ’ said the girl, piqued. 

1 t 1 ask everything, ’ ’ he cried. 

A look of maidenly alarm came into her 
eyes. It is not a foregone conclusion that one 
who has courage for sorrow will be able to 
face an intrusive and adventurous joy. She 
chose to remember the lateness of the hour, 
the loneliness of their situation, the uncon- 
ventionality of their discourse, and made an 
effort to put him off. 

“To-morrow,” she said, “to-morrow we 
will speak of this. Now, I beg you — do not 
be offended — let us say good night.” 

Dilling brought his fortitude to bear. 
They said good night. They congratulated 
themselves on their dignity. Then a wind 
blew from the mysterious chambers of Des- 
tiny and Youth, and as they turned to part, 
she felt his arms about her and knew, as in a 
dream that she had lifted her lips to his. 

255 


✓ 


AU G 21 1903 









